Ex-Facebook employee bringing sharp criticisms to U.S. Congress

A former Facebook data scientist has stunned U.S. lawmakers and the public with revelations of the company's awareness of apparent harm to some teens from Instagram and her accusations of dishonesty in its fight against hate and misinformation. Now she is coming before Congress.

Frances Haugen has come forward with a wide-ranging condemnation of Facebook, buttressed with tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in Facebook's civic integrity unit. Haugen also has filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that Facebook's own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but the company hides what it knows.

After recent reports in The Wall Street Journal based on documents she leaked to the newspaper raised a public outcry, Haugen revealed her identity in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday night. She insisted that "Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety."

The ex-employee challenging the social network giant with 2.8 billion users worldwide and nearly US$1 trillion in market value is a 37-year-old data expert from Iowa with a degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in business from Harvard. She worked for 15 years prior to being recruited by Facebook in 2019 at companies including Google and Pinterest.

Haugen is set to testify to the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection at a hearing Tuesday.