Facebook accuser Frances Haugen reacts during an interview with Reuters ahead of a meeting with German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, in Berlin, Germany, November 3, 2021.
Michele Tantussi | Reuters
Before Facebook Frances Haugen, employee whistleblower, on Thursday announced a new nonprofit with the goal of making social media healthier.
The new group seems to build on the solutions she’s proposed to lawmakers and the social media companies themselves on how to make platforms more secure, based in part on her experience with as a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation group.
Haugen has become a celebrity since leaking tens of thousands of pages of internal documents and then revealed her identity on “60 Minutes” last year. She also testify before Congress.
According to a press release, “Beyond the Screen” will begin by creating an open-source database of ways “Big tech is failing its legal and ethical obligations to society.” council”, while detailing potential solutions. The team calls this the “Obligation of Care” project to identify gaps in online harm research and figure out how to fill them.
The contents of the leaked documents, which Haugen also turned over to lawmakers and the Securities and Exchange Commission, were first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Those reports detail the company’s knowledge of their products sometimes harmful effects on children and young people, diverse content moderation standards for high profile accounts and fight potentially harmful content in different languages and cultural contexts.
Facebook has previously said the documents were culled and their framework deviated from possible positive interpretations of the data. Facebook’s parent company Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Haugen’s new project.
Haugen has recently advocated for specific laws in the United States and abroad that aim to make social media safer for children. Haugen speak out in support of her for California’s Age-appropriate Design Code Act, recently signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. The law would require many platforms to design their services with children’s privacy and safety in mind and prevent them from prompting minors to provide personal or location information, and different things. Tech industry groups argue that the language is too broad and cross-platform heavy.
