Frances Haugen says in her time with Facebook she saw, “conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook.” Scott Pelley reports. Her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Frances Haugen, worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook.
“Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she said. Haugen, who will testify before Congress this week, said she hopes that by coming forward the government will put regulations in place to govern the company”s activities.
One study Haugen uncovered showed Facebook took action on as little as 3 to 5 percent of hate speech on Facebook and on less than 1 percent of content classified under “violence and incitement”, according to 60 Minutes.
Several hours after the interview aired, Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch released a more than 700-word statement laying out what it called “missing facts” from the segment, and saying the interview “used select company materials to tell a misleading story about the research we do to improve our products.”
Facebook Critics
The criticism of Facebook has led to international media coverage and significant reporting of its legal troubles and the outsize influence it has on the lives and health of its users and employees. As well on its influence on the way media, specifically news, is reported and distributed.
Facebook has faced a number of privacy concerns; for instance, in August 2019, it was revealed that the company had enlisted contractors to generate transcripts of users’ audio chats. In part these concerns stem from the company’s revenue model that involves selling information about its users. In addition, employers and other organizations and individuals have been known to use Facebook data for their own purposes. As a result peoples’ identities have sometimes been revealed without their permission.
Cambridge Analytica Ltd was a British political consulting firm that came to prominence through the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica’s business practices. The New York Times and The Observer reported that the company had acquired and used personal data about Facebook users from an external researcher who had told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes.
