Frances Haugen,
the Facebook whistleblower who shone light on some of the platform’s questionable
practices, said that she was “extremely concerned” about the company’s plans to
build a “metaverse” owing to privacy issues. Facebook wants to fill our
environment with sensors, microphones and other ways of monitoring us, Haugen
said speaking to the French parliament Wednesday.

Also Read | What is metaverse? Zuckerberg’s new vision for Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg announced rebranding of the social media giant to “Meta”. The
rebrand includes creating face-to-face using virtual reality. Discussing the
potential for abuse, Haugen said, “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 added.

Frances Haugen, a
former engineer with Facebook, leaked a large number of internal documents that
showed the impact the platform had had on democracies and how national political
systems had been rendered fragile due to the social media platforms ability to affect
public opinion.

The 37-year-old
data engineer has been in discussions with American and European lawmakers
since she blew the whistle on alleged malpractices within the world’s biggest
social media platform. Haugen has insisted that the Mark Zuckerberg-owned
company repeatedly chose profit over curtailing toxic content and the company
cannot be trusted to change its ways.

Mark Zuckerberg,
in turn, has hit back at the whistleblower saying “the argument that we deliberately
push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical.”

Talking to French
lawmakers, Haugen also spoke about how she felt about blowing the whistle on a
powerful corporation such as Facebook and the kind of impact it had on her
life. “Providing psychological support is critical for many whistleblowers,”
she said adding that she has been fortunate to move in with her mother last
year due to the pandemic-induced lockdowns.