Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen 'Extremely Concerned' by Metaverse

Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his plan of renaming Facebook as Meta.

Facebook's whistleblower Frances Haugen on Wednesday, 10 November said that she was extremely concerned about the social media giant's intention of converting itself into a 'metaverse' due to privacy issues. Image used for representational purposes. 

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Tbo Touch; Altered by The Quint)

Facebook's whistleblower Frances Haugen on Wednesday, 10 November, said that she was "extremely concerned" about the social media giant's intention of converting itself into a "metaverse" company due to privacy issues, AFP reported.

Metaverse is a network of always-on virtual environments in which people can interact with one another and digital objects while operating as virtual representations of themselves.

Last month, after Haugen's revelations caught global attention and tarnished the image of Facebook, the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his plan of renaming Facebook as Meta.

'You Don’t Get To Decide if Facebook Can Spy on You'

Addressing the lawmakers at the French Parliament during a European tour, Haugen said that Facebook intends to monitor people by filling their environment with sensors, microphones, besides deploying other methods. She added that it would be "super problematic" if other companies adopt the same technology.

"Let's imagine you work from home and your employer decides 'I want to be a metaverse company.' You don't get to decide if Facebook can spy on you like you can opt out from using Facebook in your personal life."

Haugen said, as quoted by AFP

For the past few weeks, the data scientist, who was previously a product manager at Facebook, has been leaking a series of internal documents of the social media platform to the media.

Since then, the company has been at the receiving end of criticism over its impact on youngsters and democratic nations. In the documents that Haugen submitted to American and European lawmakers, over the last month, she asserted that Facebook sees profit over "curtailing toxic content," adding that it cannot be trusted to mend its ways.

Countering her statements, Zuckerberg said that it was "deeply illogical" to say that his company pushed "toxic content" for profit.

Haugen also told the French parliament about how she coped from public scrutiny after she identified herself as the principal source of a series of "explosive" articles by The Wall Street Journal in early October.

(With inputs from AFP.)