(Washington Insider Magazine) – A Facebook whistleblower who provided internal documents that underpinned a Wall Street Journal investigation and a Senate hearing on Instagram’s harm to teen girls, revealed her identity ahead of an interview she gave to “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday night.
Frances Haugen, 37, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, accused the social media giant of repeatedly “paying for its profile with our safety,” and said her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was that there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” she told CBS interviewer Scott Pelley.
“And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests.”
Facebook has been under fire after the Journal published a series of stories based on Facebook internal presentations and emails revealed that Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls.
Lawmakers have since accused Facebook of concealing the findings which reported evidence that the company is aware of the platform’s negative impact on mental health.
Senators demanded pledges from the company to make changes after grilling Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis in a hours-long Capitol Hill hearing called over negative findings that the platform’s own research warned on the harm that photo-sharing app Instagram can have on teenage girl’s well-being.
Davis testified to the US Senate Committee that a Wall Street Journal series — based on internal research leaked by a whistleblower at Facebook — had selectively chosen parts of its studies to give an inaccurately dark vision of the company’s work.
The social media platform has since faced backlash from critics outraged by its plans to expand into that market despite being aware of the dangers it could pose to younger users.
Haugen is set to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.
