By Jessica Guynn
Facebook Whistleblower
Frances Haugen
What to know:
Who is Frances Haugen?
Haugen, 37, is a former project manager at Facebook who leaked a massive trove of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and to lawmakers. She is calling herself "an advocate for public oversight of social media."
What made Haugen blow the whistle on Facebook?
Haugen says the social media giant is not investing enough “to keep Facebook from being dangerous.”
She pins the blame on a 2018 algorithm change which prioritized posts with high user engagement.
It turns out lies and anger rank off
the charts.
What does Haugen want?
Not for people to hate Facebook and for lawmakers to take action.
I’m hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place.
During a "60 Minutes" interview
— Frances Haugen
According to CBS, she has filed eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, comparing the company’s internal research to its public remarks.
She’s also claiming investors and advertisers were misled, too.
What information did the leak contain?
The documents Haugen released unearthed several explosive revelations about the company's tactics in the pursuit of growth.
Documents also revealed bids to market Facebook’s products directly to children, the severity of the platform's public health misinformation crisis and internal research that found Instagram is destructive to young girls' mental health.
What else is Facebook saying?
Facebook hasn't outright denied any of the Journal's reporting, but it claims the characterizations are "misleading" and has strenuously pushed back on them.
Read about Haugen’s senate testimony at USATODAY.COM