And then again, soon afterward:“I want to start by saying I think there have been a lot of mischaracterizations today include by this former employee who did not work on these issues and even with the documents she stole I think has mischaracterized what they say and what they mean about our work here.”
“The stolen documents contain what is not a peer-reviewed research article but was instead a survey of a small number—I think around 40—Instagram users who were teens who were already struggling with mental health issues.”
It worked. The headline of Yahoo Finance’s story about the interview read: “Yahoo Finance Facebook exec has seen ‘serious mischaracterizations’ of leaked documents.” Bickert isn’t alone in pushing some of these talking points, and she seems to be representing the feelings of at least some people at Facebook. “There are (many of) those inside FB who see this as theft of competitive intelligence,” Isaac wrote on Tuesday. Andy Stone, who works in comms at Facebook, tweeted out a related line of thought the same day: “Just pointing out the fact that @FrancesHaugen did not work on child safety or Instagram or research these issues and has no direct knowledge of the topic from her work at Facebook.”Facebook’s director of policy communications, Lena Pietsch, pushed Stone’s message once more, saying in a prepared statement on Tuesday that Haugen “worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reporters, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” (For what it’s worth: Samidh Chakrabarti, the founder of Facebook’s Civic Integrity team who left last month, shared a screenshot of the statement on Twitter and remarked, “Well I was there for over 6 years, had numerous direct reports, and led many decision meetings with C-level execs, and I find the perspectives shared on the need for algorithmic regulation, research transparency, and independent oversight to be entirely valid for debate.”)“I want to be clear again that the employee who took these documents didn't work on these issues. So, you know, just like a reporter reading a colleague's story and then saying, well, I'm an expert in this topic, it doesn't make you an expert to have read these things. And I think we've seen some serious mischaracterizations.”