‘Facebook weakens nation’s democracy, harms children’ says former employee to US lawmakers

World: A 37-year-old former Facebook employee in front of the United States legislators has allegedly blamed the company’s sites and apps for weakening the nation’s democracy.

Frances Haugen, the former product manager, further outlined that the app is also having a negative impact on children and is harming them.

Besides this, Haugen also heavily criticised the company at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

Defending the company, its founder Mark Zuckerberg giving a befitting reply has cited that the recent coverage left a false image of his company.

In a letter that has been made public on Facebook, the founder stated, “We care deeply about the issues such as – safety, well-being and mental health. It is difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives.”

He further asserted that many of the claims that have been made do not make any sense. With this, the letter also notes that how the company is fighting harmful content, establishing transparency and is creating an industry-leading research program in order to under these important issues.”

Globally popular social media site has been criticised for being a failure to protect the privacy of its users and not putting that much efforts to stop the spread of misinformation.

Coming on the front in an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Haugen notified that she had earlier shared a number of internal Facebook documents with the Wall Street Journal.

As per the documents, WSJ reported that research carried out by Instagram revealed the app could harm girls’ mental health.

Haugen asserted, “The leadership of the company knows how to make Facebook & Instagram safer, but won’t make the important changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”

The next day of her interview, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp were shut down for more than 6 hours, which caused a loss of $7 billion to the company.

“Yesterday, we witnessed Facebook taken off the internet. I do not know why it went down, but I know that for over 5 hours, Facebook was not used to deepen divides, destabilise democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies,” she further added.

Hundreds of millions of individuals also use the company’s other apps, including WhatsApp and Instagram.