Oct 7, 2021
Facebook has been lying to you for years, now we have definitive proof.
The Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugan photocopied hundreds of confidential documents before leaving Facebook in May. Those documents reveal a lot more about Facebook, that they didn't want us to know.
By: Mo Gerstley
In May of this year, a high-ranking employee at one of the biggest technology companies on the planet, Facebook resigned. She says her resignation came after ongoing issues she saw in the company’s anti-hate policies, and lack of violence prevention on the platform. According to her, Facebook has been putting “profit over safety” for years, contrary to their public appearance. The whistleblower, Frances Haugen revealed her identity on Sunday, on CBS’s ‘‘60-Minutes’’ just a few months after she released troves of confidential Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal. Following that September article in the WSJ, Haugen filed for whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Since then, Facebook executives were itching to find out who leaked the documents. On Sunday, however, once Haugen revealed her identity, she prepared to testify in front of the U.S Senate. Many of the documents revealed how Facebook's own research indicates the companies failure to reduce hateful rhetoric, violence, and body negativity, a starch contrast to how the company tries to appear in public. Rumors speculated even further on Monday when Facebook and its subsidiaries, Instagram and Whatsapp shut down for hours. The company claimed it was due to unexpected technological complications, but many on Social Media speculated the company was reevaluating the companies plan for the future in the midst of the whistleblower controversy. Haugen herself commented on the hours-long shutdown of the platform in her Senate testimony, saying that ‘‘yesterday we saw Facebook get taken off, the internet, I don't know why it went down, but I know that for more than five hours Facebook wasn’t used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies, and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies.’’ The correlation between Haugen and the Facebook shutdown is unknown, but there is no doubt, that Haugen's interview appearance, and Senate testimony, which revealed Facebook's public lies is an important development in the war between everyday Americans, and the overpowered tech companies. These technology companies can do anything they want, they spy on millions of Americans 24/7, they abuse their power to pay almost no tax, and they control who can and cannot speak based solely on their political affiliation. Americans are tired of being taken advantage of by these vicious technology companies, but Frances Haugen's leak of the trove of facebook files is a new win for everyday Americans.
