Facebook Whistleblower Says Meta Won't Be Able to Recover Until Mark Zuckerberg Leaves Office

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen believes the social network will not recover until Mark Zuckerberg steps down as CEO.

Frances Haugen left the company in May 2021. She collected tens of thousands of documents showing that Facebook knew its products harmed the mental health of teenagers, incited ethnic violence in countries such as Ethiopia and failed to curb misinformation before the riots in Washington last January 6.

She told Bloomberg that Zuckerberg "genuinely believes that Facebook is just a mirror" of reality, and that "you are unhappy because you see it now".

"Mark has been surrounded since he was 19 by people who told him he was doing a great job," adding that "we can demonise Zuckerberg, but that won't make him heal any faster".

Facebook differs from most public companies. Its CEO Zuckerberg owns 56% of the voting rights.  

She added, "No one but Mark Zuckerberg can control Facebook right now."

Bloomberg correspondent Emma Barnett questioned whether Zuckerberg should leave. Haugen replied that she didn't think the company could recover while he was its leader.

Haugen talked about Facebook's algorithm changes that were made in 2018. The company wanted to get user reactions, rather than aiming for longer dwell times.

According to Haugen, extreme content is getting the most exposure in "linguistically diverse places", which means they are using the most "dangerous version of Facebook" and leaving room for hate speech.