How a Facebook worker unfriended the huge social network

The idealism he and countless others invested in the promises of the world’s largest social network to heal itself was horribly wrong. The damage Facebook and siblings were causing Instagram users was simply the company’s resistance to change, he concluded. And the world beyond Facebook needs to know.

When the 37-year-old data scientist went before Congress and cameras last week to accuse Facebook of over-gaining security, it was probably the most consequential choice of his life.

And for a still young industry that has become one of society’s most powerful forces, it exposed a growing threat: the era of Big Tech whistleblowers has certainly arrived.

“There’s been a general awakening among workers at tech companies, ‘What am I doing here? has prompted.

“When you have hundreds of thousands of people asking this question, it’s inevitable that you will whistle more,” he said.

Haugen is by far the most visible of those whistleblowers. And his allegation that Facebook’s platforms harm children and incite political violence – backed by the company’s thousands of pages of its own research – may be at its most damaging.

But he is the latest to join a growing list of workers from determined technocrats so to speak. Almost all are women, and observers say this is no coincidence.

Even after making inroads, women, and especially women of color, remain outliers in the heavily male tech sector, said Ellen Pao, an executive who sued Silicon Valley investment firm Kleiner Perkins in 2012 for gender discrimination.

This position makes them more critical and “looks at some systemic issues in such a way that those who are part of the system and who are benefiting the most from it and those who are involved in it may not be able to process are,” she said.

In recent years, employees at companies including Google, Pinterest, Uber and Theranos, as well as others at Facebook, have sounded the alarm about what they say is a gross abuse of power by those in control.

His newfound assertiveness is causing a stir in an industry that uses its power to improve society while earning billions. Many well-educated and highly paid workers have long adopted that ethic. But due to the increasing numbers, the confidence in the company line is decreasing.

Still, there’s a difference between thinking about your company’s failures and revealing them to the world. There is a price to pay, and Haugen certainly knew it.

“It’s absolutely terrifying, to the point of doing what he did. And you know that the moment you start your testimony, your life is about to change,” said Wendell Potter, a former health insurer. The executive who blew the whistle on the practices of his industry.

Since appearing before Congress on Tuesday, Haugen has been out of the public eye. A representative said he and his lawyers were not available for comment.

The Iowa-born daughter of a doctor and an academic-turned-clergyman, Hogen hits the headlines with sparkling credentials including a Harvard business degree and several patents.

Long before becoming a whistleblower, Haugen was a local scoundrel.

Growing up near the University of Iowa campus, where his father taught medicine, Haugen was a member of a high school engineering team ranked in the top 10 in the country. Years later, when the local newspaper wrote about Haugen landing at Google, one of his elementary schools. Teachers remembered her as “terrifyingly bright”, while not self-conscious.

In the fall of 2002, she left for the newly established Olin College of Engineering outside Boston to attend the first grade of 75.

Many had declined offers from top universities, said computer science professor Lynn Andrea Stein, who was Olin’s first arrival to offer free education and get involved in creating something new.

But the school could not gain its accreditation until it began producing graduates, making it a non-entity in the eyes of some employers and posing a hindrance to Haugen and others like him.

“The people at Google actually threw away his application without even reading it,” Stein said.

Stein helped persuade the company to change its mind, sending an email that described Hogen as a “terrific learner and a wholly capable person” with a terrific work ethic and communication and leadership skills.

At Google, Haugen worked on a project to make thousands of books accessible on mobile phones, and another to help build a budding social network.

Google paid Haugen to get an undergraduate business degree at Harvard, where a classmate said they were still having an intense discussion about the social implications of the new technology.

“Smartphones were becoming just a thing. We talked a lot about ethical use of data and making things the wrong way,” said Jonathan Schaffy, who graduated with Haugen in 2011. “She was always super-interested in the intersection of people’s well-being and technology.”

Sheffey said she laughed when she saw social media posts in recent days questioning the motivation for Haugen’s whistleblowing.

“No one puts Francis on anything,” he said.

While at Harvard, Hogen worked with another student to create an online dating platform for putting like-minded peers together, a template the partner later turned to the dating app Hinge.

Before moving on to jobs at Yelp and Pinterest, Haugen returned to Google, working with algorithms built to understand users’ desires at each stop and put them together with people and content that best suited their interests.

In late 2018, she was contacted by a Facebook recruiter. In recent interviews with “60 Minutes” and the Wall Street Journal, Haugen recalled telling the company that he might be interested in the job if the platform involved helping to address democracy and misinformation. She said she told managers about a friend who was drawn to white nationalism after spending time in online forums, and her desire to prevent this from happening to others.

In June 2019, she joined a Facebook team that focused on network activity around international elections. But she has said she became disheartened as she became more aware of widespread misinformation online that fueled violence and abuse and that Facebook would not adequately address.

She resigned in May, but only after weeks of working on the company’s internal research and copying thousands of documents. Still, he told congressional investigators, he’s not there to destroy Facebook, just replace it.

“I believe in the potential of Facebook,” she said during her testimony last week. “We can have social media that we enjoy, that connects us, without breaking our democracy, without endangering our children, and sows ethnic violence around the world. We can do better.”

Maybe, but those in the industry say Facebook and other tech giants will dig in.

“There’s going to be a clamp down internally. It’s already happened,” said Ifoma Ozoma, a whistleblower on Pinterest now trying to encourage others in tech to uncover corporate misconduct. “This has a cooling effect through increased monitoring of employees.”

Within the larger community of whistleblowers, many are in favor of Haugen, who sees his courage, sober wit and forethought to take on the paperwork that corroborates his case.

“What he did was right that he got all his documents in one line and he did it all in front. … it’s going to be her power,” said Eileen Foster, a former executive at Countrywide Financial who in 2008 struggled to find another job in banking after uncovering widespread fraud in the approval of the company’s subprime loans. Had been.

Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee who last year accused the social network of ignoring fake accounts used to undermine foreign elections, said she was surprised the company had not caught Hogen when That company was going through research. Its blatant denial by the authorities now betrays their reluctance to change.

“I think they’ve fallen into a trap where they keep in denial and bow down and become more incendiary.” “And that leads to more people coming forward.”

Still, Haugen’s actions could make it impossible for him to land another job in the industry, Foster said. And if Facebook goes after him to legally take the document, it will have the resources to battle what a lone employee can never hope to match.

Foster recalls how his boss at Countrywide, a colleague, asked him to drop it.

“He said ‘Eileen what are you doing? You’re just a particle. A speck!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I’m a bloke,'” Foster said.

Years later, after being vilified by coworkers, rejected by employers, and a lengthy court battle over her claims, she knows better. But he does not regret his choice. And she feels a similar conviction in Haugen, though her whistle is separated by a generation.

“I wish the best for Francis,” she said.

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.