Frances Haugen blew the whistle on Meta’s alleged harms done to young people’s mental health in 2021. Five years later, her former employer has suffered two major legal losses due to the way they treat children on their platforms.
Her message to Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram: “The reality is you can run from consequences for a very long time, but you can’t run forever.”
In Los Angeles last month, a jury ordered Meta to pay a 20-year-old young woman who claimed Instagram harmed her mental health $4.2 million in compensatory damages.
In New Mexico that same week, AG Raul Torrez ordered them to pay $375 million on behalf of children who interacted with predators on their platforms.
“[People] look at how big these companies are, and it feels like it’s impossible for any individual or any small group of people to do anything,” Haugen told The Post in an interview. However, that has now been proven untrue. She says the rulings give her “a lot of faith in humanity.”
The 42-year-old has worked for Google, Pinterest, and Yelp. She was recruited by Facebook as a product manager in 2019 then came forward as a whistleblower in 2021 with the “Facebook Files,” revealing Meta acknowledged their platforms caused harms to young users in internal documents.
“I came forward because I knew that I didn’t really have a choice,” she recalled. “I had become complicit in a system that I was sincerely worried was going to harm millions of people around the world.”
In the wake of...
A heartbroken former teacher's life was ruined by false allegations of sexual misconduct as he reveals his 'nightmare' court fight to clear his name. Ian Fry, a former teacher at Malvern St James,...