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Just who is Frances Haugen?
For months, the onetime Fb product or service supervisor made waves although driving the scenes. After amassing countless numbers of web pages of Fb paperwork even though operating at the company, she had shared the trove with The Wall Street Journal, lawmakers and regulators, major to revelations that the social community knew about quite a few of the harms it was triggering.
Ms. Haugen only exposed herself on Sunday night time. That was when she went on “60 Minutes,” started off tweeting, released a individual internet site, started out a GoFundMe and introduced a European tour to speak with lawmakers and regulators. The shift was timed forward of a congressional hearing on Tuesday, when Ms. Haugen is set to testify in person on Facebook’s effect on young men and women.
Facts about Ms. Haugen, 37, have since spilled out. A native of Iowa Metropolis, Iowa, she analyzed electrical and computer system engineering at Olin University and got an M.B.A. from Harvard. She then labored at several Silicon Valley providers, together with Google, Pinterest and Yelp.
In June 2019, she joined Fb. There, she dealt with democracy and misinformation issues, as perfectly as functioning on counterespionage as portion of the civic misinformation staff, in accordance to her private site.
She remaining Fb in Could, but not right before exfiltrating thousands of web pages of inner investigation and documents. Those people documents have shaped the basis of a series of Journal content articles and a whistle-blower complaint that she and her legal professionals have submitted with the Securities and Trade Fee.
Regardless of her seemingly adversarial place, Ms. Haugen has mentioned she does not dislike Fb and just wants to boost it.
“We can have social media that provides out the most effective in humanity,” she stated on her internet site.
Though she shared some of the firm paperwork with members of Congress and the offices of at the very least five lawyers standard, Ms. Haugen determined not to supply them to the Federal Trade Fee, which has submitted an antitrust accommodate against Fb. She has mentioned she does not imagine that antitrust enforcement is the way to address the company’s complications.
“The path forward is about transparency and governance,” she claimed in a online video on her GoFundMe webpage. “It’s not about breaking up Fb.”
In organized remarks for the listening to on Tuesday, which were being produced ahead of time, Ms. Haugen also likened Facebook to tobacco providers and automakers prior to the federal government stepped in with polices for cigarettes and seatbelt guidelines.
“Congress can improve the policies Fb performs by and prevent the hurt it is triggering,” she claimed.
