Facebook Whistleblower To Talk About 'Most Urgent Threat' In Front Of US Congress

Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower is going to appear before U.S Congress on Tuesday. As per reports, she is going to criticise Facebook as "one of the most urgent threats" facing the US. She will also make demands for transparency about Facebook operations in order to regulate it better.

Haugen used to work as a product manager in Facebook's civic misinformation team. She has claimed that Facebook keeps its algorithms and operations a secret.

In her written testimony prepared for the Tuesday hearing, Haugen wrote, "The core of the issue is that no one can understand Facebook's destructive choices better than Facebook, because only Facebook gets to look under the hood."

Her testimony about the effective regulation and transparency of Facebook is going to be delivered to a Senate Commerce subcommittee.

She said, "On this foundation, we can build sensible rules and standards to address consumer harms, illegal content, data protection, anticompetitive practices, algorithmic systems and more." As per a report by Reuters, Haugen is going to present her case in front of US congress accusing Facebook of choosing profits over user safety.

Her testimony mentions, "The company's leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won't make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people."

"It is accountable to no one." Haugen will reveal that she was the one who provided documents for the investigative report by the Wall Street Journal and a hearing on the harmful effects of Instagram on teenage girls.

The report by Wall Street Journal showed Facebook's part in online polarisation after it made changes to its algorithm and how it failed to take steps against vaccine hesitancy. The report also claimed that Facebook was aware of how Instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls.

According to Haugen,  Facebook had done too little to prevent its platform from being used by people planning violence.