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Frances Haugen became known around the world in 2021 as the whistleblower who disclosed tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents revealing what the company knew about issues ranging from how its platforms were harming teenagers’ mental health to how they allowed the spread of misinformation. Now she has her sights trained on equipping the next generation of tech leaders with tools to make the world a better place.
In the year since Haugen blew the whistle about the company, which has since rebranded as Meta, discourse surrounding Big Tech has been increasingly dominated by scrutiny over the ways in which some of the most significant technological advances of the past two decades are harming vulnerable communities, stoking division and weakening democracy.
Read More: Inside Frances Haugen’s Decision to Take on Facebook
Now, social media’s biggest players are facing growing calls for both accountability and regulatory action—a reckoning that’s focused on how to blunt the effects of harmful platforms and products after they’re built. But what if the engineers and developers behind those innovations had reflected on potential harms at the ideas stage rather than working backward to address concerns after the fact? What if those technologies were never engineered in the first place?
These are the types of questions that Haugen is working to bring into...
A fake BBC News report that falsely accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of displaying a stolen painting has been circulating on X since April 21. The footage appears to show the Ukraini...