The Facebook Whistleblower

On Sunday, October 3rd, 2021, the identity of a Facebook whistleblower who released tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents — leading to backlash directed towards Facebook, a social media company — was revealed late at night on live television as Frances Haugen.

Frances Haugen, who is a former Facebook product manager that used to work on civic integrity issues at the company, says that the documents that she leaked shows that Facebook knows its platforms are being used to spread hate, violence, misinformation, and to cause harm to teens. In addition to this, the documents also show that Facebook has done nothing about this and has tried to hide all evidence relating to this matter.

“They are most definitely pushing harmful information, I am one-hundred percent certain of that.” – Senior Noah Bacus exclaimed.

Haugen filed at least eight complaints against the Securities and Exchange Commission of Facebook alleging that the company was hiding information about their ill will towards the public. An investigation was conducted showing that Facebook was aware of their services problems including the harmful effects of misinformation and the process of causing harm to young teens using Instagram.

“Facebook is most definitely doing more harm than good, especially how it deals with misinformation on the platform.” – Senior Ben Collett declared.

Frances testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security on Tuesday, October 5th, 2021. She stated that Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy. Haugen called on Congress to take action to prevent the harm that the social media company is causing by amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. She had also exclaimed that Facebook should declare a “moral bankruptcy” and ask Congress for help. Finally, Frances Haugen voiced that she has strong national security concerns about how the company operates their algorithms.

“The government should try to intervene and regulate or set rules that Facebook has to comply with.” – Senior Noah Backus states.

Since then Facebook has aggressively pushed back against these reports and allegations calling many of the claims “misleading” and argued that their apps and services are doing more good than harm. The social media company has been cherry picking statements to make them look good and has even funded an advertising campaign on television to try and refute these claims which are biased for Facebook. Many are upset about how the company operates and how their algorithms work spying on them and spreading false information and or harmful content.

“Facebook knew about its problems and they should have done something about it, however they now are turning to use tactics that make them look good as a company instead of addressing and fixing their issues.” – Senior Ben Collett affirmed.