Facebook whistleblower attends State of the Union as Biden calls for crackdown on social media firms

A Facebook whistleblower who leaked tens of thousands of internal documents and accused the company of prioritising money over public safety was in the audience at Joe Biden’s first State of the Union, where he called for social media firms to be held accountable for their role in America’s mental health crisis.

The White House on Tuesday announced it had invited former Facebook manager Frances Haugen to attend the speech to hear Mr Biden’s planned crack down on companies like her former employer.

“Haugen is a specialist in algorithmic product management, having worked on ranking algorithms at Google, Pinterest, Yelp and Facebook,” a press release stated.

“Haugen was recruited to Facebook to be the lead Product Manager on the Civic Misinformation team, which dealt with issues related to democracy and misinformation, and, later, worked on counter-espionage.

“She is an advocate for more humanity and transparency across the tech and social media industry, especially as it relates to teen mental health.”

Ms Haugen, who left Facebook in March of 2021, made headlines last fall when she sat before Congress and presented thousands of pages of the company’s own research which she said showed its platforms harm children and incite political violence.

She alleged that Facebook - which has since been renamed Meta - had failed to make changes to Instagram even after the research uncovered harm to teenage girls and had not done enough to combat hate speech and misinformation.

Ms Haugen summarized her claims by saying the social media giant was “paying for its profits with our safety”.

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” she told 60 Minutes prior to her congressional appearance. “And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.

“Its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarising, it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called her claims a “false picture” of the company, but shared her view that the government needed to update its internet regulations.

Mr Biden addressed that topic during his speech as he called for Congress to confront the “systematic role” social media platforms play in the mental health crisis among young people by strengthening privacy protections, banning targeted advertising to children and stopping the collection of their personal data.

“As Frances Haugen, who is here with us tonight, has shown, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit,” he said.

“It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children. And let’s get all Americans the mental health services they need.”

His plan for accountability includes a $5m budget for advancing research on social media harms and programs to address them, senior administration officials said before the speech.