Facebook whistleblower reveals identity, accuses the platform of a ‘betrayal of democracy’

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4 years ago

October 4, 2021

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A Facebook whistleblower who brought internal documents detailing the company’s research to The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Congress unmasked herself ahead of an interview she gave to “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday night.

Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, according to her website, revealed herself as the source behind a trove of leaked documents. On her personal website, she shared that during her time at the company, she “became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety — putting people’s lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Frances made the courageous act to blow the whistle on Facebook.”

Haugen previously worked as a product manager at Pinterest, Yelp and Google, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also lists herself as the technical co-founder behind the dating app Hinge, saying she took its precursor, Secret Agent Cupid, to market.

“I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I’d seen before,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Haugen told “60 Minutes” she left Facebook in May.

Jeff Horwitz, the Journal reporter who wrote the series of articles based on the leaked documents, also shared Haugen’s identity on Twitter on Sunday night, revealing her as the key source behind the stories.

The documents, first reported by the Journal, revealed that Facebook executives had been aware of negative impacts of its platforms on some young users, among other findings. For example, the Journal reported that one internal document found that of teens reporting suicidal thoughts, 6% of American users traced the urge to kill themselves to Instagram.

Facebook has since said that the Journal’s reporting cherry-picked data and that even headlines on its own internal presentations ignored potentially positive interpretations of the data, like that many users found positive impacts from engagement with their products.

“Every day our teams have to balance protecting the ability of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place,” Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said in a statement following Haugen’s identity reveal. “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.”

Haugen said she decided this year to make Facebook’s internal communications public, saying she realized she would need to do so “in a systemic way” and “get out enough that no one can question that this is real.”

Haugen in turn copied and released tens of thousands of pages of documents, “60 Minutes” reported.

Haugen pointed to the 2020 election as a turning point at Facebook. She said Facebook had announced it was dissolving the “Civic Integrity” team, to which she was assigned, after the election. Just a few months later, social media communications would be a key focus in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“When they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,'” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Facebook told the news program that it had distributed the work of the Civic Integrity team to other units.

Haugen pointed to Facebook’s algorithm as the element that pushes misinformation onto users. She said Facebook recognized the risk of misinformation to the 2020 election and therefore added safety systems to reduce that risk. But, she said, Facebook loosened those safety measures once again after the election.

“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,” Haugen said. “And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”

Lawmakers have appeared unmoved by Facebook’s responses to the Journal’s reporting based on Haugen’s disclosures. During a hearing before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection Thursday, senators on both sides of the aisle lambasted the company, urging it to make its temporary pause on building an Instagram platform for kids permanent. The lawmakers said they did not have faith Facebook could be a good steward of such a platform based on the reports and past behavior.

The whistleblower is scheduled to testify before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection on Tuesday. Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis told lawmakers on Thursday that Facebook would not retaliate against the whistleblower for her disclosures to the Senate.

Haugen said she has “empathy” for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying he “has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.”

She called for more regulations over the company to keep it in check.

“Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.” “It is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety. I’m hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. That’s my hope.”

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Technology

Tesla recalls 10,500 Powerwall 2 battery systems due to overheating, fire risk

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4 hours ago

November 13, 2025

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Tesla recalls 10,500 Powerwall 2 battery systems due to overheating, fire risk

Tesla’s Powerwall 2

Source: Tesla

Tesla is recalling around 10,500 units of its Powerwall 2, a backup battery for residential use, according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission disclosure out Thursday.

“The lithium-ion battery cells in certain Powerwall 2 systems can cause the unit to stop functioning during normal use, which can result in overheating and, in some cases, smoke or flame and can cause death or serious injury due to fire and burn hazards,” the CPSC recall notice said.

While Elon Musk‘s electric vehicle and clean energy company blamed the issue on a “third-party battery cell defect,” it did not name the supplier.

The recall notice said Tesla previously received 22 customer reports of the Powerwall 2 overheating, including five fires resulting in “minor property damage,” but no known injuries.

MLS games head to Apple TV in 2026 as Season Pass subscription ends

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4 hours ago

November 13, 2025

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MLS games head to Apple TV in 2026 as Season Pass subscription ends

Major League Soccer is stepping onto a bigger stage next year, when all of its matches will find a new home on Apple TV.

Beginning in the 2026 season, MLS games will be available on Apple’s flagship streaming platform, which currently includes Major League Baseball games as well as scripted series like “Severance.”

The move marks a big shift for both the league and Apple’s media strategy, as the tech giant will end Season Pass — the separate subscription service for MLS games provided by Apple.

Apple and MLS had inked a 10-year media rights deal in 2022 that saw Apple become the exclusive global home to the U.S. professional soccer league. However, rather than feature matches on the fledgling streaming service, Apple instead launched Season Pass for an additional subscription solely for MLS games.

“This idea that you could watch all of our matches in one place with a push of the button globally was unprecedented. We really, really liked that concept with Season Pass, and it worked because people reacted really well to the product,” MLS Deputy Commissioner Gary Stevenson said in an interview.

Season Pass — which costs $14.99 a month, compared to the $12.99 charged for the separate monthly Apple TV subscription — kicked off in 2023. Apple doesn’t provide subscriber metrics for its streaming services.

Stevenson said that conversations about moving the league to Apple TV started as Apple’s main streaming platform grew.

“They came to us and said, ‘Let’s put it on Apple TV,’ and we said, ‘We’re all in,'” said Stevenson. “So this was good news for us.”

While Stevenson didn’t go into specifics, some terms of the deal changed as part of the move to Apple TV.

“But it’s not like it was a big renegotiation because what we’ve been focused on is the distribution, and how to make it a better and more accessible experience for the fans,” said Stevenson.

Since jumping into the streaming game, Apple has methodically added sports to its platform and has secured exclusive rights in an increasingly fragmented sports viewing ecosystem.

Most recently Apple and Formula 1 inked a five-year exclusive media rights deal, meaning all races will stream on Apple TV in the U.S. beginning next year. Apple is paying roughly $140 million annually for the F1 rights, CNBC previously reported.

Apple has been looking to change the current sports viewing experience. While live sports garners huge audiences in the pay TV bundle, the rise of streaming has led to a fractured market in which consumers often require multiple subscriptions to watch one sport.

At a recent event, Apple Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue said the market has “gone backwards,” when it comes to sports viewership.

“You used to buy one subscription, your cable subscription, and you got pretty much everything they had. Now, there’s so many different subscriptions, so I think that needs to be fixed,” Cue said during a panel in October.

Since MLS kicked off its media rights deal with Apple, there has been little information about how Season Pass has performed — and some skepticism about its success.

However, MLS Commissioner Don Garber told CNBC Sport in an interview last year that Apple Season Pass subscriptions had exceeded expectations, though he declined to provide specific numbers.

“We have more subscribers than we and Apple thought we would have,” Garber told CNBC at the time, adding that there would be more transparency at a later date.

Apple also doesn’t release numbers for Apple TV, but Cue has reportedly said that the platform has “significantly more than 45 million” viewers.

The broader reach for the league will come after the MLS completed its 30th season. It has been working to capitalize on the growth of soccer’s popularity in the U.S., particularly ahead of the World Cup, which will take place in North America next year.

The league, which pales in comparison to the popularity of the NFL, NBA and other U.S. pro sports that have existed for decades before the MLS, has also seen fandom increase in recent years after global superstar Lionel Messi started playing for Inter Miami CF.

Technology

Wall Street cools on Oracle’s buildout plans as debt concerns mount: ‘AI sentiment is waning’

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5 hours ago

November 13, 2025

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Wall Street cools on Oracle's buildout plans as debt concerns mount: 'AI sentiment is waning'

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk speaks at a Q&A following a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.

Shelby Tauber | Reuters

Two months ago, Oracle’s stock had its best day since 1992, soaring 36% to a record after the company blew away investors with its forecast for cloud infrastructure revenue.

Since then, the company has lost one-third of its value, more than wiping out those gains. Midway through November, the stock is on pace for its worst month since 2011.

The hype was sparked by Oracle’s strengthening ties to OpenAI. But the mood of late has turned, with investors questioning whether the AI market ran too far, too fast and whether OpenAI can live up to its $300 billion commitment to Oracle over five years.

“AI sentiment is waning,” said Jackson Ader, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in an interview.

Ader said that of the big cloud companies in the GPU business, Oracle is expected to generate the least amount of free cash flow. To fund the capex required for Oracle’s business, Ader expects Oracle to turn to more creative financing tools.

Oracle is looking to raise $38 billion in debt sales to help fund its AI buildout, according to sources with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named because the information is confidential. Bloomberg reported on the planned debt raise last month.

Read more CNBC reporting on AI

The company needs a massive pool of capital as it works with partners to develop and lease data centers across Texas, New Mexico and Wisconsin, while also buying hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to run AI models.

At Oracle’s big annual conference in October, called AI World, tech enthusiasts cheered the company’s cloud infrastructure design as being easily scalable. Investors remained largely enthusiastic at the time, thanks to Oracle’s over $450 billion in signed contracts that hadn’t yet been recognized as revenue.

Skepticism started to hit shortly after the conference. Oracle shares fell 7% on Oct. 17, as investors questioned the company’s ability to reach its lofty outlook announced at its investor day. Oracle said it expected to reach $166 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue in the 2030 fiscal year, up from $18 billion in fiscal 2026.

Oracle’s next quarterly earnings report is expected in mid-December.

Andrew Keches, an analyst at Barclays, said off-balance sheet debt facilities and vendor financing are two options for Oracle. Keches recently downgraded Oracle’s debt, citing the company’s “significant funding needs.”

“We struggle to see an avenue for ORCL’s credit trajectory to improve,” Keches wrote in a note to clients this week.

Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison during a launch event at the company’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, California June 10, 2014.

Noah Berger | Reuters

Oracle bulls point to founder Larry Ellison’s long and storied track record. A hedge fund manager who asked to remain anonymous told CNBC that Ellison is “someone you don’t want to bet against.”

And Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in an interview that Oracle could rebuild its momentum in the market with more AI deals. However, Jaluria currently has a hold rating on the stock.

As more investors look to hedge their bets, Oracle’s 5-year credit default swaps have climbed to a 2-year high, a level that’s not alarming but worth watching, credit analysts told CNBC. Credit default swaps are like insurance for investors, with buyers paying for protection in case the borrower can’t repay its debt.

Barclays recommended clients buy Oracle’s 5-year credit default swaps.

Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Last month, CNBC’s David Faber asked Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two CEOs, whether OpenAI will be able to pay Oracle $60 billion a year. Magouyrk responded, “of course,” while also pointing to OpenAI’s growth prospects and rapid rise in users.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X last week that the company will top $20 billion in annualized revenue this year and reach hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030.

Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Wednesday that Oracle represents the “bad behavior in the AI buildout.” He contrasted Oracle with Microsoft, Amazon and Google, which he said all have the available cash and customer demand to justify their rapid expansions.

For Oracle, however, there’s an overreliance on OpenAI, a cash-burning startup, Luria said. Additionally, he said that gross margins for renting out GPUs are dramatically lower than the roughly 80% margin in the company’s core business. Luria has a hold rating on the stock.

In terms of the $100 of stock appreciation that initially followed the last earnings report, “it makes a lot of sense that that’s completely gone away,” Luria said.

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