Complaints Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) accuses the company of lying to the agency , investor , journalists , and Congress .
Before pull up stakes the company in May 2021 , Haugen , a former Facebook product manager for civil misinformation , made sure to take G of internal document with her . She later became the rootage for adamning Wall Street Journal seriesdetailing everything from how Facebook downplayed interior research showing the psychological harm Instagramcauses for some young womento turning a blind heart toreports of human traffickingand asecret “ XCheck ” programexempting certain users from its rules . Haugenunveiled her identityin alengthy interviewon 60 moment on Sunday , with the mesh now reporting she has file at least eight disjoined complaints with the SEC .
At the core of the complaints , firstreported by CBS ’s 60 Minutes , Haugen ’s lawyers write , is the title that in public statements Facebook misrepresented the scale and its consciousness of severe problems with Facebook products to investors so wantonly that it violated securities police force . Facebook is a public company , and the complaints reason the extent of the Trygve Halvden Lie and omission in its corporate SEC filing also went well beyond what ’s legal . Haugen ’s filing with the SEC state :
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook manager and whistleblower, testifying before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Oct. 5, 2021.Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)
Our anonymous client is disclosing original evidence showing that Facebook , Inc. ( NASDAQ : FB ) has , for years past and on-going , rape U.S. securities laws by make textile misrepresentations and omission in statements to investors and prospective investors , including , inter alia , through filing with the SEC , testimony to Congress , online statement and culture medium story .
Specific examples abduce in the filings admit claims that Facebook and its subsidiary company Instagram knew , as of 2019 , that their products were used “ promote human trafficking and domestic servitude . ” The written document provided to the Wall Street Journal showed that Facebook only took action when the problem grew so substantial that Apple threatened to take away its apps from the App Store .
“ Our investigative finding demonstrate that … our platform enable all three stages of the human exploitation lifecycle ( recruitment , facilitation , victimization ) via complex substantial - macrocosm networks , ” an internal Facebook written document cited in the filing conclude .
The SEC filings also posit that Facebook “ failed to deploy internally - recommended or durable sideboard - measures ” against voter fraud conspiracy possibility and violent rhetoric that circulated during the 2020 elections and before Donald Trump patron stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to overturn the results .
One complaint , titled , “ Facebook mislead investors and the public about its purpose perpetuating misinformation and crimson extremism associate to the 2020 election and January 6th uprising , ” argues that Facebook research made it well aware its good word algorithm “ can slue the great unwashed interested in conservative topics into basal or polarize melodic theme and groups / pages . ” Specifically , it cites a study that found that newfangled exploiter who follow “ swan / eminent tone materialistic pages ” like Donald Trump or Fox News saw their passport “ include conspiracy recommendations after only 2 years . ”
Another document provided by Haugen states , “ We ’re deleting less than 5 % of all of the hatred speech put up to Facebook . This is in reality an optimistic estimate . ”
One of the filing accuses Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of lying to Congress about Instagram ’s impact on young girls in March 2020 ; while Zuckerberg told Congress he did n’t trust that it hurt them , the company had already direct internal research concluding , “ We make body image issue speculative for 1 in 3 teen girl . ” ( Facebook laterdownplayedthis determination , claiming it only apply to a subset of respondents who “ were experiencing body image issues . ” The company has only selectively released its interior research . )
Finally , other filing impeach Facebook and its executives of issuing misleading statement about its adequate enforcement of the rules despite the universe of the XCheck programme , of pretending it takes global action at law against heathen violence despite knowing it was hobble by a deficiency of speech acquisition and local faculty , and represent cooked Quran about exploiter demographic to advertizer and investors .
Facebook responded to 60 Minutes ( or antecedently comment to the Journal ) denying or contend each of the claims raise by Haugen . In a representative assertion t0 CBS on the hatred speech topic , Facebook ’s director of policy communicating , Lena Pietsch , in effect argued the caller did the best it could :
We ’ve invested heavily in multitude and technology to keep our platform safe , and have made fighting misinformation and providing classic info a anteriority . If any enquiry had key an exact solution to these complex challenge , the technical school diligence , governments , and society would have solve them a long clip ago . We have a secure track record of using our inquiry — as well as international research and close coaction with expert and organizations — to inform changes to our apps .
On Tuesday , Haugentestifiedbefore a Senate Commerce subcommittee regarding Facebook ’s practice .
“ The realism is that we ’ve seen from ingeminate documents within my disclosures , is that Facebook ’s AI system of rules only catch a very tiny nonage of offending contentedness , ” Haugen told lawmakers on Tuesday . “ And well case scenario , and the case of something like hatred speech , at most they will ever get 10 to 20 percent . In the case of tiddler , that means drug paraphernalia ads like that , it ’s potential if they swear on computers and not humans , they will also likely never get more than 10 to 20 pct of those ads . ”
In another exchange with legislator , Haugen described a cyclical “ radiation diagram of behavior ” in which “ problems were so understaffed that there was kind of an inexplicit dismay from have better detection system . ”
“ My last team at Facebook was on the counterespionage squad within the menace news org , and at any given clip , our squad could only plow a third of the cases that we knew about , ” Haugen narrate the senators . “ We knew that if we built even a basic detecter , we would in all likelihood have many more case . ”
Facebooksuffered a major outagethat affected both its main site and all its subordinate , Instagram and WhatsApp , for most of the work day on Monday . The caller has also seen doubled - digit stock losses over the past few week , though it has shrugged off like downswing in the past tense and sit around at almost $ 334 on other Tuesday good afternoon , up from around $ 264 a year ago .
The SEC differentiate 60 Minutes it “ does not point out on the existence or nonexistence of a potential investigation . ”
Haugen ’s complaints to the SEC are available for download here:1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 .
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and civilization news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
