Zuckerberg breaks silence, denies Facebook whistleblower's claims

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has released a lengthy statement following whistleblower Frances Haugen's scathing testimony about the company at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has released a lengthy statement responding to whistleblower Frances Haugen's scathing testimony Tuesday about the platform's alleged harmful effects on democracy and children, which she said executives were aware of but ignored, putting "profits over people."

Zuckerberg posted a letter to Facebook late Tuesday, saying he shared the note with company employees following Monday's massive outage, which he addressed first, before responding to the whistleblower's allegations.

"Second, now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in. I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it just doesn't reflect the company we know. We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being and mental health," Zuckerberg wrote. "At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted."

Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, smuggled out copies of thousands of internal documents she's shown to lawmakers alleging Facebook's knowledge of its platforms' negative impact on teenagers and young girls and its dismissal of how hate speech and misinformation are emphasized on their sites. She revealed her identity during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," and has been cooperating with a Senate Commerce subcommittee as part of its ongoing efforts to assess potential regulation of the platform.