Facebook critics have a Frances Haugen problem: Many love that the whistleblower leaked a trove of documents exposing many of the tech giant’s worst problems — but hate her ideas on how to solve them.
Haugen has repeatedly insisted that breaking up Meta Platforms — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and which changed its name from Facebook last month amid a torrent of bad press — will not solve the issues she has helped uncover. Those include Instagram’s toxic effects on teen mental health and the company’s struggles to crack down on human trafficking.
Instead, Haugen has insisted in interviews and in Congressional testimony that the company’s woes are mainly the result of poor leadership under Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who has deployed algorithms that run its social-networking apps to incentivize engagement at any cost.
“These systems are going to continue to exist and be dangerous even if broken up,” Haugen told Congress in October.
Such comments have left bad tastes in the mouths of many Meta critics, who initially praised Haugen’s leaks as a breakthrough as they seek to hold Facebook accountable for its increasingly outsize power.
“She turned over the documents — great,” Mike Davis, head of the conservative anti-Big Tech group the Internet Accountability Project, told The Post. “Thank you for your service. Now go away.”
“She’s not a policy expert, especially not in antitrust,” said Davis, who previously worked for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)...
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