Whistleblower Reveals Facebook Turning Off Content Safeguards For Profit Likely Contributed To Capitol Invasion

<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>New Delhi:</strong> A former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen claimed that Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to prevent misinformation after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in last year&rsquo;s elections to make money.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">She further alleged that this may have contributed to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>ALSO READ: <span style="color: #e03e2d;"><a style="color: #e03e2d;" href="https://ift.tt/3FkzOsI For Disruption': Zuckerberg Apologizes After Longest Global Outage Of WhatsApp, FB &amp; Instagram</a></span><br /></strong></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">During an interview that aired Sunday on CBS&rsquo; &ldquo;60 Minutes&rdquo; the whistleblower, who worked as a product manager stated that in 2018, the content flow to the website was changed in Facebook's newsfeed which contributed to more divisiveness and ill will in a network ostensibly created to bring people closer together.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">This change got people to keep coming back to the website, which further helped the company sell more of the digital ads that generate most of its advertising.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">&ldquo;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,&rdquo; said Haugen, who joined Facebook in 2019 after working at Google and Pinterest.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The change became more visible, Facebook&rsquo;s annual revenue has more than doubled from $56 billion in 2018 to a projected $119 billion this year, based on the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet. Meanwhile, the company&rsquo;s market value has soared from $375 billion at the end of 2018 to nearly $1 trillion now.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">After the interview came out, Facebook's top executive asserts that Haugen's allegations are &ldquo;misleading&rdquo;, AP reported.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">&ldquo;Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out,&rdquo; Nick Clegg, the company&rsquo;s vice president of policy and public affairs wrote to Facebook employees in a memo sent on Friday according to the report.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">This interview came at a time when lawmakers and regulators continue to scrutinise Facebook's power to shape opinions and its polarizing effects.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The backlash towards the social networking platform has only increased in recent time, in a mid-September, Wall Street Journal expose, revealed Facebook&rsquo;s own internal research had concluded the social network&rsquo;s attention-seeking algorithms had helped foster political dissent and contributed to mental health and emotional problems among teens, especially girls.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Haugen had leaked thousands of pages of internal research to the Journal which provided as the foundation for a succession of stories packaged as the &ldquo;Facebook Files&rdquo;.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">According to Sunday's '60 Minutes' interview, the 37-year-old former employee has also filed 8 complaints with US securities stating that Facebook has been withholding information regarding the risks the social media platforms has.&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>