Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended company after whistleblower Frances Haugen before Congress about content on its platform.
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In a post late Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg called the recent revelation of his former employee's allegations "hard to read because it simply doesn't reflect the company we know."
"We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being, and mental health," Zuckerberg wrote. "It's hard to accept a revelation that misrepresents our work and our motivations."
Earlier Tuesday, Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook's urban disinformation team, testified before a Senate subcommittee that the social media giant puts "profits before people" and knows its products "harm children, fuel division, weaken democracy."
See also: Facebook: Instagram is not toxic for teens, as WSJ says
Haugen backed up her claims with tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook research, which she had previously leaked to the Wall Street Journal.
In her testimony, Haugen particularly pointed to Facebook-based ranking systems, which tend to amplify content that provokes stronger reactions, including more extreme posts.
He urged Congress to regulate the social media company, saying it “has repeatedly misled the public about what its own research reveals about child safety … and its role in spreading divisive and extremist messages.”
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Mark Zuckerberg, in turn, said that the " idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being " is not true, adding that the claim that Facebook " intentionally promotes content that angers people for profit is deeply absurd " and that it is " very important to him that everything we build is safe and good for children . "
