Former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen has been revealed as the source behind tens of thousands of pages of leaked internal company research, which she says show the company has been negligent in eliminating violence, disinformation, and other harmful content from its services, and that it has misled investors about these efforts.

For Facebook, the document leak – and the public reveal of the source – represents perhaps the most significant crisis in the company’s history, further deteriorating relationships between the company and Washington politicians. The company is the target of a historic federal antitrust case and fielding document requests as members of Congress probe its role in the Jan. 6 riot.

Widely referred to as a “Facebook whistleblower” responsible for leaking documents behind a Wall Street Journal series, Haugen spoke publicly about her complaint to federal authorities, disclosing her identity for the first time in an interview airing on “60 Minutes” Sunday night.

“There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money,” Haugen said in the interview.

A veteran of tech companies including Pinterest, Yelp and Google, Haugen left Facebook in May after realizing that it puts profits over the public good, she said. Before the 2020 election Haugen said the company implemented key measures to prevent the spread of misinformation. But after the election, she said the company decided to dissolve these key civic integrity measures. She said she stopped trusting her employer was willing to limit growth to improve public safety.

“As soon as the election was over they turned them back off, or they changed the settings back to what they were before to prioritize growth over safety,” she said. “And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”

Haugen’s lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has broad oversight over financial markets and has the power to bring charges against companies suspected of misleading investors, resulting in fines or other penalties for companies and executives. The complaints compare Haugen’s findings with the company’s public statements, according to 60 Minutes. The SEC did not immediately comment Sunday on the documents or whether it planned to bring action against Facebook.

For weeks, revelations from the documents, which were at the center of The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series, have bolstered claims that Facebook’s researchers and executives have a deep understanding of the ways its products harm people – beyond what had been previously known to the public and key policymakers. The wide-ranging documents represent an unprecedented look inside Facebook’s struggles with an assortment of problems including child safety, political polarization, human trafficking and drug cartels.

Andrew Bakaj, who represents Haugen at Whistleblower Aid, said it was “immediately clear” that she had materials that were critical for lawmakers and regulators seeking to hold the company accountable.

“She’s a perfect example of why whistleblowers are so important: without her, we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Bakaj told The Washington Post.

The revelations have only added to the embittered company’s woes in Washington, including Haugen’s upcoming testimony before the Senate Commerce consumer protection subcommittee Tuesday. Haugen has also shared some of the documents with Congressional offices that have been probing Facebook.

Facebook has sought to deny and deflect the revelations, downplaying the documents – even tearing into its own internal research – in blog posts, interviews and Congressional testimony. Facebook head of global affairs Nick Clegg appeared on CNN Sunday morning, proactively calling allegations that the company is to blame for the violence on Jan. 6 “ludicrous.” (The company’s top executives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, have not addressed the reports at all).

“The responsibility for the violence on January the 6th and the insurrection on that day lies squarely with the people who inflicted the violence and those who encouraged them, including then-President Trump and candidly many other people in the media who were encouraging the assertion that the election was stolen,” Clegg said.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate have demanded that Facebook turn over documents pertaining to its handling of the Jan. 6 insurrection, including an order from the House select committee investigating the matter to preserve communications on its platforms related to the riot at the Capitol. Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said at the time the company looks “forward to continuing to work with the committee” in the House, but did not say whether it will fully comply with the requests. Lawmakers across Capitol Hill have at times criticized the company for not forking over documents about its policies and practices on misinformation, violent rhetoric and more.

Despite repeated pleas from lawmakers to make more of its research public, so far the company has turned over two partially redacted slide decks looking at Instagram’s impact on children and teens’ mental health, along with annotations downplaying their findings.

The company agreed to partially comply with the Facebook Oversight Board’s recommendation the company take “a comprehensive review” of its impact on the events January 6, reflecting on “the design and policy choices that … may enable its platform to be abused.” Instead Facebook committed to making data available to a select group of its existing research partners.

Clegg said despite the public backlash, Facebook would continue to do research into the negative impacts of its products.

“We’re going to continue to ask ourselves these difficult questions,” Clegg said in the interview.

Facebook has been under the microscope in Washington for nearly five years for harms ranging from foreign misinformation to privacy abuses. The company is already the target of a historic Federal Trade Commission antitrust case, which it is expected to respond to on Monday. In 2019, it also had to pay a record-setting $5 billion fine to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over alleged privacy abuses.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill responded last week by hauling Facebook executive Antigone Davis before Congress to testify on a Wall Street Journal report, including company research that showed Instagram was making teen girls’ body image issues worse. At the hearing, lawmakers accused the Facebook of burying these findings and pledged to further probe the matter.

Haugen addressed the findings about social media’s impact on teen girls in the 60 Minutes interview.

“As these young women begin to consume this eating disorder content, they get more and more depressed,” Haugen said. “And it actually makes them use the app more. And so, they end up in this feedback cycle where they hate their bodies more and more.”

Haugen is going public with her findings as there is a growing debate about the power and influence of the world’s largest tech companies, and a growing push from countries around the world to pursue regulation.

“It’s important because Big Tech is at an inflection point,” Bakaj, her lawyer, said. “It touches every aspect of our lives – whether it’s individuals personally or democratic institutions globally. With such far reaching consequences, transparency is critical to oversight, and lawful whistleblowing is a critical component of oversight and holding companies accountable.”

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