A Facebook whistleblower who leaked tens of thousands of internal documents and accused the company of prioritising money over public safety was in the audience at Joe Biden’s first State of the Union, where he called for social media firms to be held accountable for their role in America’s mental health crisis.
The White House on Tuesday announced it had invited former Facebook manager Frances Haugen to attend the speech to hear Mr Biden’s planned crack down on companies like her former employer.
“Haugen is a specialist in algorithmic product management, having worked on ranking algorithms at Google, Pinterest, Yelp and Facebook,” a press release stated.
“Haugen was recruited to Facebook to be the lead Product Manager on the Civic Misinformation team, which dealt with issues related to democracy and misinformation, and, later, worked on counter-espionage.
“She is an advocate for more humanity and transparency across the tech and social media industry, especially as it relates to teen mental health.”
Ms Haugen, who left Facebook in March of 2021, made headlines last fall when she sat before Congress and presented thousands of pages of the company’s own research which she said showed its platforms harm children and incite political violence.
She alleged that Facebook - which has since been renamed Meta - had failed to make changes to Instagram even after the research uncovered harm to teenage girls and had not done enough to combat hate speech and misinformation.
Ms Haugen...
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