A bipartisan group of senators called for Facebook to be subpoenaed and forced to turn over internal company research and data regarding revelations of the company’s harmful effects provided by a whistleblower on Tuesday.
Members of the Senate Commerce Committee, including Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, said that they favored issuing subpoenas to Facebook to get the full extent of information initially disclosed by Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower.
Klobuchar and Cruz told the Washington Post about their push for subpoenas during a break in a Senate hearing featuring Haugen.
Markey told a group of reporters who attended the hearing that he was in support of the move.
“One hundred percent, we should get every bit of information from Facebook,” Markey said. “It should be a bipartisan subpoena from this committee that ensures that all the documentation is out for the public to see.”
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Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee’s top Republican, wouldn’t commit to any specific action but said subpoenas “should be discussed.”
Members of both parties expressed support during the hearing for holding Facebook accountable for problematic behavior through further hearings, investigations, and legislation.
“We can investigate and investigate. We need action,” Klobuchar told the Washington Post.
The whistleblower, Haugen, is a former product manager at Facebook who came to the company to help protect against election interference on the platform. She said she became disillusioned with the tech company’s motives and felt she had to do something about the ways it was often knowingly harming users.
Haugen resigned from Facebook in May, but before doing so, she dug into and saved copies of multiple internal company documents that exposed an array of deep-rooted problems. She gave these to the Wall Street Journal, which used them for its Facebook Files series, which has thrown the company into a crisis in the past month.
Haugen said during the hearing that Facebook could still be profitable if it removed its engagement-based algorithm.
She also said that she was against breaking up Facebook altogether, unlike many of the senators at the hearing.
Facebook contested many parts of Haugen’s testimony on Capitol Hill but said the company was in favor of Congress passing legislation regarding online regulations.
“We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet,” Facebook spokeswoman Lena Pietsch said in a statement regarding the hearing.
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“It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act,” she added.
