Facebook prematurely disabled a number of security measures designed to prevent the spread of disinformation during the US presidential election last November. It eventually led to the Capitol being stormed on January 6 this year, says a whistleblower who revealed himself on the CBS program 60 Minutes.
The whistleblower is Frances Haugen, the former product manager at the social medium. According to her, the measures would have been disabled, so that the social medium could earn more money.
Haugen said a 2018 algorithm change led to more divisions among Facebook users. Facebook no longer adjusted that algorithm because it saw that users came back more often on the social medium, so that more ads were sold.
“I saw time and again that there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen says. “And Facebook always opted for its own interest, such as making more money.”
Watch a snippet of the interview at 60 Minutes on Twitter:
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