The whistleblower behind the massive Facebook leaks targeting the company’s questionable moves regarding the ill-effects of its platforms has finally come out in the open, blasting the company for repeatedly choosing profit over the safety of its users. The internal material shared by the whistleblower led to some bombshell findings, such as a two-tiered system for enforcing content policies that put celebrities and influential personalities on a higher pedestal and meted out more lenient treatment. Moreover, internal research proved that the company was aware of the drug and human trafficking problem on its platform, but its response was far from adequate.
The company reportedly made a payment of around $5bn (£3.65bn) to the US Federal Trade Commission as part of a settlement with the agency to protect Mark Zuckerberg in wake of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. More importantly, leaked internal research slides revealed that the company knew about the ill effects of Instagram, especially among female teens struggling with body acceptance issues and social pressure. Facebook has since called the investigation biased and refuted some of the claims, but it has already attracted intense scrutiny from lawmakers who are now planning to launch a probe into the company.
Now, the whistleblower behind the damning leaked materials has revealed her identity, outing herself as Frances Haugen — a data scientist who served as a product manager at Facebook working with the Civic Integrity group. In a 60 Minutes interview, Haugen said that a repeating pattern at Facebook was that in scenarios where there was a conflict of interest — between what was good for the public and what was beneficial for the company — the social media giant chose the route that suited its own interests and prioritized making money. Haugen, who has previously worked for Google and Pinterest, notes that she has seen multiple social networks, but things were substantially worse at Facebook than anything she has observed before.
Facebook Prioritized Engagement To Fill Its Coffers
Haugen adds that the company is lying to the public when it claims to make progress against problems such as online hate and misinformation. And despite being the best in the world at having capabilities to control such content, the company has done little to combat the problems it is facing, an ignorance that eventually helped catalyze events such as the Capitol Hill riots and violent pogroms in Myanmar to name just a couple. Facebook is said to have prioritized profit over safety on multiple occasions, shutting down a lot of protections it put in place before the elections to ensure that user engagement returns to normal.
The allegations suggest that as a platform that makes money when people engage and consume content, Facebook overwhelmingly makes decisions to support its own interests. Regarding the influence of Instagram, Haugen says that Facebook was aware of the platform’s bad influence on female teens, exacerbating body positivity issues, depression, and eating disorders. And despite knowing that, Facebook was working on an Instagram for Kids project, but facing intense criticism, the company has reportedly shelved those plans. The whistleblower added that Mark Zuckerberg didn’t aim to create a hateful platform, but he has allowed decisions that greenlit the distribution of hateful content on Facebook.
Source: 60 Minutes, Frances Haugen