Haugen Says Facebook Can Change But Company Won't On Its Own
October 05 2021 - 12:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Georgia Wells
Frances Haugen has one thing she hopes people will take away
from her disclosures about her former employer: Facebook can
change, but it is not going to do so on its own.
In testimony before the Senate consumer protection subcommittee
on Tuesday, Ms. Haugen said Facebook has portrayed the problems on
its social-media platforms as unsolvable issues that leave
consumers with hard choices.
"They want you to believe that you must choose between a
Facebook full of divisive and extreme content, or losing one of the
most important values our country was founded upon: free speech,"
she said.
She said her goal today was to communicate that these problems
are actually solvable.
Ms. Haugen also said Facebook's lack of transparency has limited
the development of options to address some of these problems.
"Today no regulator has a menu of solutions for how to fix
Facebook, because Facebook didn't want them to know enough about
what's causing the problems," Ms. Haugen said.
"Otherwise there wouldn't have been a need for a whistleblower,"
she said.
Write to Georgia Wells at georgia.wells@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 05, 2021 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)
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