In what has already been characterized as "powerful" and "courageous" testimony, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress Tuesday morning on the $1 trillion, 2.89 billion user social media platform's underhanded practices to remain profitable at all costs.

Haugen, a data scientist who holds an MBA from Harvard University and who has worked at four major social media companies besides Facebook, including Google and Pinterest, outlined many of her former employer's positives, such as connecting long-lost friends and helping small businesses locate customers and suppliers.

Those benefits aside, Haugen told Congress that Facebook also actively seeks out teenage girls through its TikTok subsidiary, where they are intentionally exposed to negative information about their bodies. Facebook also knowingly goes about "sewing ethnic violence" and permitting "extreme messaging" that have, in the worst-case scenarios, even led to death, she testified before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection.

Earlier, over the weekend on WSJ.com and on Sunday evening on CBS' "60 Minutes," Haugen accused the company of being aware of apparent harm to some teens from Instagram and being dishonest in its public fight against hate and misinformation.

Haugen's condemnation of Facebook has been wide-ranging, buttressed with tens of thousands of pages of internal research documents she secretly copied before leaving her job in the company's civic integrity unit. She also has filed complaints with federal authorities alleging that Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but the company hides what it knows.

Haugen says she is speaking out because of her belief that “Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy.”

“The company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people,” she says in her written testimony prepared for the hearing. “Congressional action is needed. They won’t solve this crisis without your help.”

Haugen called these side effects of the worldwide social media giant "devastating truths."

On Monday, Haugen resigned from Facebook, where she was a top executive in the "civic misinformation" department.