Less than two years after Facebook hired Frances Haugen to correct dangerous biases spreading across the platform, she had seen enough.
The idealism she and countless others had invested in promises made by the world’s largest social network to repair itself had been woefully out of place. The damage Facebook and Instagram did to users was only matched by the company’s resistance to change, she concluded. And the world beyond Facebook had to know.
And for a still young industry that has become one of the most powerful forces in society, it showed a growing threat: the era of big tech whistleblowers has definitely dawned.
“There was just a general awakening among tech company workers who said, ‘What am I doing here?’ “Said Jonas Kron of Trillium Investment Management, who urged Google to increase protection for employees who raise the alarm about corporate crimes.
“With hundreds of thousands of people asking this question, it is inevitable that more whistleblowers will emerge,” he said.
Haugen is by far the most visible of these whistleblowers. And their allegations that Facebook’s platforms harm children and incite political violence – backed by thousands of pages of the company’s own research – are perhaps the most devastating.
But she’s only the last to join a growing list of people from across the technology sector who are determined to speak up. Almost all of them are women, and observers say this is no coincidence.
Even after the advance, women, and women of color in particular, remain underdogs in the heavily male tech sector, said Ellen Pao, an executive who sued Silicon Valley investment firm Kleiner Perkins in 2012 for gender-based discrimination.
This status leads them to be more critical and “see some of the systemic problems in such a way that people who are part of the system and who benefit the most from it and are rooted in it may not be able to process them”. She said.
In recent years, employees at companies like Google, Pinterest, Uber and Theranos, as well as others from Facebook, have been sounding the alarm because they say it is a gross abuse of power by those responsible.
Their new openness is shaking an industry that touts its power to improve society and make billions at the same time. Workers, many of whom are well trained and highly paid, have long subscribed to this ethic. But for a growing number, trust in the corporate line is waning.
Still, there is a difference between talking about your company’s flaws and exposing them to the world. There is a price to be paid, and Haugen certainly knew it.
“It’s absolutely terrifying, terrifying to get to the point of what she did. And you know that the moment you begin your testimony, your life will change, ”said Wendell Potter, a former health insurance manager who turned the practices of his own industry upside down.
Since Haugen came to Congress on Tuesday, he has resigned from the public. A representative said she and her lawyer were unavailable for comment.
The Iowa-born daughter of a doctor and pastor academic steps into the limelight with brilliant credentials including a Harvard business degree and multiple patents.
Long before she became a whistleblower, Haugen was something of a local prodigy.
Growing up near the University of Iowa campus where her father taught medicine, Haugen was a member of a high school engineering team that is ranked in the top 10 in the country. Years later, when the local newspaper wrote about Haugen’s landing on Google, one of their elementary schools, teachers remembered her as “excruciatingly clever” even though she was not at all self-confident.
In the fall of 2002, she went to the newly formed Olin College of Engineering outside of Boston to enter the first grade of 75.
Many would have turned down offers from top universities, attracted by Olin’s offer of free education for the first-timers and the chance to create something new, said Lynn Andrea Stein, professor of computer science.
But the school couldn’t get its accreditation until it started producing graduates, which made it a non-unit in the eyes of some employers and a hurdle for Haugen and others like it.
“The Google people actually threw their application away without reading it,” said Stein.
Stein helped the company change its mind by sending an email describing Haugen as a “greedy learner and absolute doer” with excellent work ethic, communication and leadership skills.
At Google, Haugen worked on a project to make thousands of books accessible on mobile phones and another to build a young social network.
Google paid Haugen for a degree in economics from Harvard, where a classmate said he had deep discussions even then about the social implications of new technologies.
“Smartphones were just becoming a thing. We’ve talked a lot about the ethical use of data and the wrong way things are organized, ”said Jonathan Sheffi, who graduated from Haugen in 2011. “She has always been very interested in the interface between human wellbeing and technology.”
Sheffi said he laughed at seeing social media posts in the past few days questioning Haugen’s motivations for whistleblowing.
“Nobody brings anything up to Frances,” he said.
While at Harvard, Haugen worked with another student to develop an online dating platform to bring like-minded friends together, a template the partner later turned into the dating app Hinge.
Haugen returned to Google before moving to jobs at Yelp and Pinterest, working at each station with the algorithms designed to understand what users want and match them with people and content that matched their interests.
At the end of 2018, she was contacted by a recruiter from Facebook. In recent interviews with 60 Minutes and the Wall Street Journal, Haugen recalled telling the company that she might be interested in helping the platform fight democracy and misinformation. She said she told managers about a friend who became attracted to white nationalism after staying on online forums and her desire to prevent it from happening to others.
In June 2019, she joined a Facebook team focused on networking activities related to international elections. However, she said she became frustrated when she became aware of the widespread misinformation online that fueled violence and abuse, and that Facebook would not adequately address.
She resigned in May, but only after working weeks sifting through internal company research and copying thousands of documents. Still, she told Congress investigators, she was not out to destroy Facebook, but simply to change it.
“I believe in the potential of Facebook,” she said when she testified last week. “We can have social media that we enjoy, that connect us without destroying our democracy, putting our children at risk, and sowing ethnic violence around the world. We can do better. “
Maybe, but those who know the industry say Facebook and other tech giants will get involved.
“There will be internal enforcement. It has been there before, ”said Ifeoma Ozoma, a whistleblower at Pinterest who is now trying to encourage others in the tech space to expose corporate misconduct. “In this way, the increased monitoring of employees has a deterrent effect.”
Within the larger whistleblower community, many fire for Haugen, praising their courage, calm intellect, and foresight in handling the paperwork that backs their case.
“What she did right was that she got all of her papers one at a time and in advance. … That will be their power, “said Eileen Foster, a former executive at Countrywide Financial who struggled to find another job in banking after uncovering widespread fraud in the company’s sub-prime loan approval fraud in 2008.
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 didn’t catch Haugen while doing a company research carried out. The strong denial of the executives now reveals their unwillingness to change.
“I think they have fallen into a trap where they keep denying, ducking and becoming more and more arsonists,” she said. “And that leads to more people getting in touch.”
Still, Haugen’s actions could make it impossible for her to get another job in the industry, Foster said. And if Facebook prosecutes her for stealing documents, it will have the resources to fight that a single employee can never reach.
Foster recalls her Countrywide boss, an ally, begging her to give it up.
“He said, ‘Eileen, what are you doing? You are just a stain. A spot!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I’m a pissed off spot,’ ”Foster said.
Years later, after enduring rascality from colleagues, rejections from employers, and lengthy legal proceedings for her claims, she knows better. But she doesn’t regret her decision. And she feels a similar conviction in Haugen, although her whistleblowing is separated by a generation.
“I wish Frances the best,” she said.
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