Less than a day after a report aired on “60 Minutes” from a whistleblower detailed company practices that prioritized profits over safety, both Facebook and Instagram went down.
Users began running into issues accessing both of the social media giant’s websites just before 11 a.m. on Monday. The company’s What’s App was also reportedly experiencing issues.
Francis Haugen, a former data scientist at Facebook, kept her identity a secret when she filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission against Facebook and shared internal Facebook documents with The Wall Street Journal.
Last night, Haugen was revealed as the whistleblower during a report on “60 Minutes” and Haugen said she’ll testify to congress that Facebook has deceived regulators and the public about its monitoring of hate speech and misinformation.
She said on “60 Minutes” that Facebook “is choosing profit over safety.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says political parties have been quoted in Facebook’s own research saying they know Facebook changed its algorithm and “now if [they] don’t publish angry, hateful, polarizing… content,” there’s less engagement. https://t.co/XKKBhxZZ36 pic.twitter.com/tvSmVIJfWT
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 4, 2021
Haugen is a native of Iowa City and 2002 graduate of West High School, Radio Iowa reported Monday, and her website says her parents are professors. Haugen has an electrical and computer engineering degree from Olin College and a Harvard MBA. She worked at Google and Yelp before she was hired at Facebook in 2019. She resigned from Facebook in May of this year.
A spokesman for Facebook told CNN the social media platform reflects the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity and Facebook is trying to mitigate the bad and amplify the good.
Many users went to Twitter to share their thoughts.
Every now and then I fall apart. #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/jzsWCQXkoZ
— Bonnie Tyler (@BonnieTOfficial) October 4, 2021
Well with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp being down, we would like to congratulate @Twitter for surviving the Social Media Hunger Games.
— HostGator (@HostGator) October 4, 2021
Welcome to all the people checking twitter to see what’s up with Facebook being down, we hope you stay
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) October 4, 2021
I guess we can stop closing out the apps and turning off/on the wifi…. https://t.co/PeqsTlbzuS
— Grant Gilmore WTSP (@GrantWTSP) October 4, 2021
Facebook and Instagram are both down worldwide one day after a damning “60 Minutes” segment that featured former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen taking the company’s awfulness to task.
— Charlotte Clymer 🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) October 4, 2021