Frances Haugen is worried Facebook could come after her in response to the company's internal documents that she handed over to lawmakers and media outlets worldwide.
Speaking to POLITICO in Brussels, the former Facebook engineer said she had decided to go public because her discussions with regulators and policymakers — she has briefed a U.S. Senate subcommittee, a British parliamentary group and the European Parliament on the company's inner workings — meant that her name would eventually have been made public.
"I know that they could do horrible things to me," said Haugen when asked about Facebook potentially filing a lawsuit against her. "They could, you know, tarnish my name. They could fund troll armies. They could sue me. There's lots of things they could do. But compared to having a million lives on the line, none of those harms seem like things that outweigh that."
Haugen has filed for so-called whistleblower protection with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which would protect her from potential Facebook lawsuits on information that she provided to regulators.
A Facebook executive told U.S. lawmakers in October that the company would not retaliate against anyone who provided internal documents to U.S. lawmakers. A Facebook spokesman, however, declined to confirm to POLITICO whether the company would take separate legal action against Haugen for her revelations to other governments or to the media.
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