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Did Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen cause WhatsApp, Instagram global outage?

Social media sleuths accused Facebook of 'deliberately' shutting down the social media platforms to avoid 'scandal' after a global outage occurred

Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, 37, quit Facebook in May, following the company dismantling her unit that attempted to address misinformation on the popular platform. She spoke publicly for the first time on Sunday, October 3. She voiced her claims about the company 'prioritizing divisive content over safety to garner higher profits'. A global outage of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp occurred on Monday, October 4 afternoon, a day after Frances Haugen's bombshell '60 Minutes' interview. Twitter sleuths took no time in connecting the two incidents, accusing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of 'deliberately' shutting down the social media platforms to avoid 'scandal'.

"Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money, " Haugen claimed. After leaving her job at Facebook in May Haugen leaked a trove of internal Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, which led to the publication of a series of damning reports last month. She also sent the documents to lawmakers and filed for whistleblower protection with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Haugen is set to testify in front of the Senate committee on Tuesday, October 5, where she will elaborate on the documents and talk about why she believes the government needs to clamp down on Facebook. It is important to note here that Facebook is already facing an anti-trust suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission seeking to force the social media giant to restructure or sell off assets including Instagram and WhatsApp over concerns that "Facebook holds monopoly power in the provision of personal social networking in the United States and has held such power continuously since at least 2011".

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On CBS's '60 minutes'  Haugen said, "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 added, "Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money." After the 2020 elections, Haugen noted that the company got rid of the Civic Integrity unit and disabled some safety features which were put in place to reduce misinformation. "They told us, ‘We’re dissolving Civic Integrity.’ Like, they basically said, ‘Oh good, we made it through the election. There wasn’t riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now'. Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection," she said, adding, "As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me." She also accused Facebook of 'playing safe' and said, "Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money."

In response to Haugen's statements, Facebook, in a statement to '60 Minutes' denied the allegations and said, "We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true. If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago."

'Frances Haugen is a Facebook whistleblower with receipts'

Netizens connected Haugen's revelations to the global outage of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and posted tweets like, "She's the reason why facebook/instagram are down and we should thank her for her bravery #facebookwhistleblower" Another person wrote, "Can't have a scandal if no one can use your products #facebookwhistleblower" One tweet read, "Frances Haugen is a Facebook whistleblower with receipts… if you watched 60 minutes you will understand why Instagram and Facebook are down #facebookwhistleblower #facebookdown #instagramdown" Another person tweeted, "#facebookwhistleblower comes out. #zukerberg facing serious allegations #facebookdown Bring it all down"