Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Tells Congress She is ‘Actually Against the Breaking Up of Facebook’

Facebook whistleblower and former product manager Frances Haugencolossal issues she has been pointing to this week.

Haugen highlighted the negative effects Facebook and other social media platforms owned by the company have on its users while testifying in front of Congress Tuesday.

The former product manager even said in her opening statement that “Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy, and much more.”

Yet, when Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) asked if she believes breaking up Facebook would solve these problems, she revealed that she is against that solution.

“I’m actually against the breaking up of Facebook, because even looking inside of just Facebook itself … you see the problems of engagement-based rank repeat themselves,” Haugen said. “So the problems here are about the design of algorithms, of AI, and the idea that AI is not intelligent.”

She went on to explain that “these systems are going to continue to exist and be dangerous even if broken up,” adding that advertisement platforms do not want to learn how to navigate multiple platforms.

“What I’m scared of is that right now, Facebook is the internet for lots of the world. If you go to Africa, the internet is Facebook,” she added. “If you split Facebook and Instagram apart, it’s likely that most advertising dollars will go to Instagram, and Facebook will continue to be this Frankenstein that is altering — that is endangering lives around the world, only now there wont be money to fund it.”

She went on to suggest that oversight and finding collaborative solutions with Congress would be the key to protecting Facebook users.

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