‘Buck Stops with Him’: Facebook Whistleblower Blames Zuckerberg for Negative Effects by Social Network

Testifying in front of Congress on Tuesday, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen blamed the social network’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the negative effects the social media site has had on people in that “the buck stops with him.”

During a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, Chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) remarked, “Last Thursday, my colleagues and I asked Ms. [Antigone] Davis, who was representing Facebook, about how the decision we had made whether to pause permanently Instagram for kids and she said ‘there’s no one person who makes a decision like that. We think about it that collaboratively.’ It’s as though she couldn’t mention Mark Zuckerberg’s name.”

Blumenthal proceeded to ask Haugen, “Isn’t he the one that will be making this decision, from your experience in the company?”

Haugen replied that Zuckerberg is powerful in the Big Tech industry altogether, let alone just at Facebook.

“Mark holds a very unique role in the tech industry, in that he holds over 55 percent of all the voting shares for Facebook. There are no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled,” she said. “And in the end, the buck stops with Mark. There is no one currently holding him accountable but himself.”

“And Mark Zuckerberg is in fact the algorithm designer in chief, correct?” asked Blumenthal.

“I received an MBA from Harvard and they emphasized to us that we are responsible for the organizations that we build. Mark has built an organization that is very metrics-driven. It is intended to be flat,” said Haugen. “There is no unilateral responsibility. The metrics make the decision. Unfortunately, that itself is a decision. And in the end, if he is the CEO and the chairman of Facebook, he is responsible for those decisions.”

“The buck stops with him,” said Blumenthal.

“The buck stops with him,” agreed Haugen.

Watch above, via CNN.