Who is Facebook’s whistleblower? What will they reveal?
Remember when it seemed like social media was merely a fad like airbrushed shirts and tattoo choker necklaces? It’s no surprise that it became what it is today and it looks like the later generations aren’t going to know a world without it. Facebook is so infamous because it combines aspects of common web surfing with interpersonal elements.
Today, Facebook is filled with informative content talking about every possible global, national, or local issue all in one place while entertaining its users with video games, memes with other applications. With the other types of social media, Facebook activates the brain’s reward center by providing a sense of social acceptance in the form of likes and positive feedback. It gives us instant gratification which is why it’s so popular.
Of course, it’ll never be a stranger to criticism. A whistleblower is set to testify that Facebook prioritizes their profits over the people. That’ll throw anyone under scrutiny. According to the Huffington Post, “The ex-manager will urge Congress to regulate the firm, coming forward despite the tech giant having “infinite resources, which it could use to destroy me.”
Who is the whistleblower? And what will they reveal? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see some drastic changes to Facebook?
Shutdown
Since we’re talking about Facebook, we mind as well tell you why it was shut down for a little bit. We haven’t forgotten the whistleblower and we’ll tell you who it is monetarily.
According to experts, the social media’s technical infrastructure is unusually reliant on its own systems which proved detrimental on Monday. Once Facebook sent the fateful routing update, their engineers were locked out of the system that would allow them to communicate that the update had really been an error.
The outage lasted about six hours but Facebook seems to be doing just fine now.
The whistleblower
Who is the whistleblower? Frances Haugen is a former Facebook employee, and is set to testify before Congress that the tech giant is putting their “profits before people” thus Congress should take action to regulate it. Reporters received a written testimony ahead of a Senate subcommittee hearing.
Haugen was a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team. They’re going to say the social media company’s products “harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy.”
Haugen is scheduled to testify, “The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people. Congressional action is needed.
The Facebook Files
Frances Haugen first unveiled her identity Sunday, in an interview on 60 Minutes. Prior to this day, she has leaked tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook research to lawmakers, The Wallstreet Journal and regulators which ran a series of articles known as The Facebook Files.
The whistleblower strongly believes that what she’s doing is the right thing despite Facebook having a great deal of resources which they could use to destroy the whistleblower. In the midst of leaking the internal documents, the whistleblower is alleging that Facebook downplayed the negative effects of Instagram on young girls.
The company didn’t take hard enough action against the pandemic misinformation that spread across their platforms. She also believes Facebook didn’t take enough about the validity of the 2020 election which housed dangerous lies and provided a home for pro-Donald Trump rioters to plan the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
The whistleblower plans to say before a panel of the Senate Commerce Committee, “The result has been a system that amplifies division, extremism, and polarization 一 and undermining societies around the world. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people.”
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Watch the whole case, it’s very interesting! Now that we know who the whistleblower is, what’s the future of social media looking like? Drop your thoughts off in the comments!
