![]() ![]() “Building things is way more fun than making things secure and safe,” Brian Boland, a longtime vice president in Facebook’s Advertising and Partnerships divisions, told the author about Facebook’s unofficial world-view. It was a corporate philosophy shared by many authority figures at the company. Samidh Chakrabarti, a one-time leader of Facebook’s civic-integrity team, assured Haugen that most Facebook workers “accomplish what needs to be done with far less resources than anyone would think possible,” a revelation meant to be inspiring but that struck Haugen as disturbing. “Unfortunately, safety and growth routinely traded off - and Facebook was unwilling to sacrifice even a fraction of percent of growth.” “I was surrounded by smart, conscientious people who every day discovered ways to make Facebook safer,” Haugen told the author. Struggling? They were understaffed, under absurd deadlines, and more often than not ignored when they came up with real, if difficult, ideas on how to change the platform for the better. When they failed to deliver easy solutions on a short timeline, they were reviewed poorly by upper management.Ĩ Samidh Chakrabarti (left), a one-time leader of Facebook’s civic-integrity team, told Haugen that most Facebook workers “accomplish what needs to be done with far less resources than anyone would think possible.” MONICA DAVEY/EPA-EFE/Shutterstockīut Haugen was undeterred - and she had questions, like why were so many employees at Facebook Her team was given just three months to come up with an actionable game plan, a schedule that Haugen knew was implausible. ![]() Haugen was hired by Facebook in 2019 for a noble mission: to study how misinformation was spread on the site and what could be done to stop it. She “reflexively accepted the idea that social networks were good for the world, or at worst neutral and entertaining,” writes Horwitz. Askar – Īn Iowa native with college professor parents, Haugen had studied electrical and computer engineering at Olin College before heading west to Silicon Valley in the mid-aughts, full of optimism about what social media could accomplish. She wasn’t just a disgruntled employee, but someone who truly believed that exposing Facebook was the only way to save it.Ĩ Teams at Facebook - owned by Meta - “were understaffed, under absurd deadlines, and more often than not ignored when they came up with real, if difficult, ideas on how to change the platform for the better,” according to the book. Still, he had nothing but faith in Haugen’s intentions. Haugen’s earnest belief that “if she didn’t expose what was known inside Facebook, millions of people would likely die” struck him as rather grandiose and melodramatic. In the beginning, Horwitz was intrigued but cautious. “The uproar would plunge Facebook into months of crisis, with Congress, European regulators, and average users questioning Facebook’s role.” Over the coming months, Haugen would bring Horwitz “tens of thousands of pages of confidential documents, showing the depth and breadth of the harm being done to everyone from teenage girls to the victims of Mexican cartels,” writes Horwitz. Neither of them could have anticipated how far that rabbit hole would take them. Instead, she suggested meeting at a hiking trail for privacy - even even sent Horwitz the address via an encrypted messaging app.Ĩ Haugen delivered “tens of thousands of pages of confidential documents, showing the depth and breadth of the harm being done to everyone from teenage girls to the victims of Mexican cartels,” Horwitz writes. Haugen didn’t want to talk by email or even phone, insisting it was too dangerous. “People needed to understand what was going on at Facebook, she said, and she had been taking some notes that she thought might be useful in explaining it,” Horwitz writes in his new book, “ Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets” (Doubleday). A mid-level product manager on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team, Haugen, 35, had only been with the social network for a little less than a year and a half. On paper, she didn’t seem like the most obvious candidate for a whistleblower. But then he reached out to Frances Haugen. ![]() On a December afternoon in 2020, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz drove to Redwood Regional Park, just east of Oakland, Calif., for a mysterious meeting.įor months, he’d been working on a story about Facebook, albeit with little luck finding anyone from the company willing to talk. Woman claims liberal NYC moms’ Facebook group banned her for standing with IsraelĮx-Meta employee testifies Instagram parent failed to protect teens, including his daughter Jilted would-be bride selling engagement ring on Facebook plagued by ‘creepy’ men on listingīig Tech loses bid to toss lawsuits alleging social media platforms harmed children ![]()
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