Provost’s Forum speaker shares story of bringing accountability to Big Tech

If you walk into a store and a precariously balanced ladder falls and injures someone, an attorney will argue in court that the store had a duty of care to protect its customers by ensuring the ladder was secure. Why doesn’t that duty of care exist in social media?

That’s one of the questions Frances Haugen asked her audience to consider during her keynote address on Feb. 17 at the Provost’s Forum examining “Big Problems in Big Tech” in Page Auditorium. Later, during the two-hour session, students and faculty asked questions ranging from what made Haugen go public, to where she saw the Metaverse going and what new challenges it poses.

Haugen is a data scientist, best known as having blown the whistle on Facebook by turning over 22,000 pages of secretly copied company documents to the federal government and the media on the tech giant’s questionable business practices. She has a degree in computer engineering from Olin College and a Harvard master's degree in business.

People Listened

“A lot of people were ringing the alarm bell for ten years, but I was able to validate it,” said Haugen, who worked at Google, Yelp, and Pinterest before moving on to Facebook, where she was hired to be part of a civic integrity unit.

She found that Facebook and its other product, Instagram, used powerful algorithms to inflict political, social, or emotional harm on users. Although she said, “There was a long series...

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