Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen Establishes A Non-Profit Organization To Educate Lawyers Dealing With Social Media Companies

Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who founded a non-profit organization to fight social media companies. (photo; twitter @FrancesHaugen)

JAKARTA - Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who released internal documents and data from Facebook and testified before lawmakers about the social network's behavior, is now seeking funding to start a nonprofit focused on holding companies like Meta to account.

The organization, which wants to be called Haugen Beyond the Screen, plans to focus on three main goals. The first is educating potential lawyers against social media companies. The second incentivizes investors to see how socially responsible a tech company is before giving money away. The third gives regulators and researchers an inside look at how the platform works.

Politico reports that Haugen is currently working with two others on the project. They want to raise about 5 million US dollars (IDR 74.1 billion) to start the organization. The report also mentions that he has received at least some funding from several currently unnamed supporters.

Haugen hopes Beyond the Screen can help lawyers when they get involved with a class-action lawsuit against the social media giant by making sure they know what to look for when filing a lawsuit.

He also wants to create metrics that investors can use to compare how well a company is doing at keeping its users safe. This could potentially give them a way to justify why they are divesting from a company that may be good for business, but bad for society.

Finally, Haugen wants to create a mock social network, which can be used to demonstrate and test how their platform and algorithms work. The idea is that a simulation platform can help people better understand how a company does things, without the company actually having to get involved. This could be a boon for researchers, who have struggled in the past against Facebook and others providing them with inaccurate data.

This sounds like a more focused version of the concept Haugen told Vogue about last year, when he explained that he wanted to build "an open source social network for students of all ages to learn and experiment," as the article puts it.

Vogue also mentioned that Haugen is investing in crypto, which seems a bit unfortunate given the current state of the market.

Haugen says the goal is to get to a point where this type of organization isn't needed. "My biggest hope is that I'm not relevant anymore," he told Politico.

It could be a long time before that happens. As Haugen himself points out, there are countries where Facebook is essentially the entire internet. While he's pushing for legislation in the US and EU, he said he wants Beyond the Screen to focus on the rest of the world as well.