Facebook Executive Ridicules Whistleblower After Senate Testimony: ‘She’s Not An Expert in These Areas’

A Facebook executive ridiculed Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen on Wednesday, a day after Haugen gave damning testimony before a Senate subcommittee.

Appearing on America’s Newsroom on Fox News, co-host Dana Perino asked Monika Bickert, Vice President for Content Policy at Facebook:

There’s a lot of headlines that came out of the hearing yesterday where the whistleblower was testifying … A lot of that came out yesterday. And, you know, this is a woman who had only worked at the company for two years. She said she was disturbed by what she had seen. She did not work on child safety issues herself. This was something that she thought should come forward. What do you think of her as a whistleblower? Do you think she is credible or do you think that perhaps this was all planned that when she came to the company she wanted to do this in the first place?

“Well, I can’t speculate on her motives,” replied Bickert. “But I can say she didn’t work on these issues and her testifying about them and mischaracterizing some of the documents she stole is like if a journalist were to read another journalist’s story, another colleague’s story, and say ‘Oh, I’m an expert on this.’ I mean, she’s not an expert in these areas. These are not areas that she worked on at Facebook.”

Bickert continued:

I have been at the company for more than nine years. I do work on these issues. My background is in child safety. I’m also a mother who’s raised two girls and the people who work on our team include teachers, former child safety prosecutors, a former rape crisis counselor, a woman who spent 30 years encountering gender-based violence. These are the sorts of experts we bring to Facebook because they care deeply about these issues.

And on the research that has been mischaracterized, you know, two things here. One is the research largely showed that teens have a positive experience. When they are dealing with mental health issues, as many teens are, Instagram is a place that helps them find support. And on 12 issues that we asked both boys and girls about who were already struggling with mental health issues, the majority of them said that Instagram either made things better or it didn’t materially affect them.

Watch above, via Fox News.