Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who exposed Facebook’s illegal data practises and testified in front of lawmakers, is raising up to $5 million to launch a nonprofit organisation that will train lawyers to fight Big Tech.
According to Politico, Haugen wants to establish a nonprofit called ‘Beyond the Screen,’ which will focus on incentivizing investors to consider how socially responsible a tech company is before investing in it, as well as providing regulators and researchers with an inside look at how platforms work.
“Before (my revelations), each of us could only see what was on our own screen. What changed with the disclosures is that we now know what’s going on beyond our own screens. It changed the calculations on how we all approach these companies,” she was quoted as saying in the report.
The former Facebook employee, who has spent the last several months testifying to authorities in the United States, Europe, and Australia, has received some early-stage funding from donors.
“For Haugen, an early goal is to give lawyers willing to take on social media a crash course in what they should be looking for when filing their lawsuits,” the report said.
The whistleblower intends to create a simulated social network, an artificial platform where regulators, researchers, and others can play out potential scenarios.
Haugen testified before US and European lawmakers last year after leaking a cache of internal Facebook reports.
The reports revealed several alarming policy and moderation failures at Facebook, but lawmakers focused their attention most intensely on documents relating to Instagram’s mental health effects on young users.
As a result of these reports, the committee held additional hearings with representatives from other popular social platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
