Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook until May this year, revealed her identity as the whistleblower against the social media giant when she was interviewed on Sunday by CBS in a show called “60 minutes.”
Haugen, 37, revealed herself to be ‘Sean’, the person responsible for exposing Facebook’s internal data and documents which led to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal against Facebook Inc. and a Senate hearing on the effect of Instagram on children and teens set to be held on Tuesday.
In the interview, she reiterated Facebook’s continuous prioritization of profit over removing misinformation from the platform and taking measures to curb hate speech that is rampant among users.
“I’ve seen a bunch of social networks, and it was substantially worse at Facebook than what I had seen before,” Haugen said during the interview. “Facebook over and over again has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she added, alluding to the risks Facebook poses to its users due to its lack of control over user content.
“There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” she further disclosed in the interview, “And Facebook over and over again chose to optimise for its own interest like making more money.”
Haugen has also filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, accusing Facebook of misleading investors with public statements that did not match its internal actions and withholding material information, according to her attorney John Tye.
Facebook countered Haugen’s claims made during the interviews through a published statement. It stated, “ We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content,” further adding that claiming Facebook “encourages bad content and do nothing is just not true.”
