Facebook whistleblower on school boards’ social media lawsuits

In a Canadian first, four Ontario school boards are taking the companies behind Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok to court, alleging the platforms are knowingly harming students and disrupting the ways schools operate. 

The claims haven’t been proven in court, and all three companies say they do their best to keep young people safe online.

Our guest today has been speaking for years about the kinds of issues raised in the Ontario school board lawsuits. In 2021, Frances Haugen quit Facebook, took tens of thousands of internal documents and leaked them. She later testified to the U.S. Congress, and alleged the company’s products were harming children.

Today, we’ve got Haugen on the podcast to discuss the Ontario school board lawsuits, the harms she believes these companies are causing to children, and what she thinks should be done about it.

A previous version of this episode included an anecdote about a boy who was bullied, and later took his own life after videos of his bullying were posted online. That anecdote has been removed. In fact, the boy was murdered by two other boys, in an attack that investigators say was planned on social media, and was triggered by an online conflict in a chat group.