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Investing.com – Facebook stock (NASDAQ:FB) was 1% lower in premarket trading as whistleblower Frances Haugen prepares to testify before Congress on allegations of poor governance at the company.
Haugen, whose material was behind the series of exposes in The Wall Street Journal criticizing the company over the last two weeks, gave it another airing on CBS’s 60 Minutes at the weekend, repeating her core allegation that the company had prioritized profit over the safety and health of its customers.
Haugen joined the social media giant in June 2019 and left it in May this year, having tired of trying to improve the company from within.
The former product manager was hired to help protect against election interference on Facebook, but, according to her, what she saw was the company’s lack of openness about its platforms’ potential for harm and unwillingness to address its flaws.
Recent coverage by the Journal, which relied on Haugen’s documents and interviews with current and former Facebook employees, said the company is “acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routinely fail”.
According to Haugen, Facebook also relaxed election-related safeguards too soon, a move she said was a factor in the spread of misinformation, leading up to the deadly Capitol riot. One such step was lifting of the cap on live videos.
As per internal documents, the company was aware that Instagram use was leading to high anxiety, mental-health, body-image and confidence issues in teenage girls.
The outcry that followed the WSJ revelations forced Facebook last week to pause work on Instagram Kids, a version of the popular app it was targeting at an even younger population.
