My new book Broken Code tells the story of Facebook’s — now Meta‘s — long-secret work to understand how its platforms shaped its users’ behavior and rein in societal-grade harms that the outside world didn’t understand. Drawing on records gathered by whistleblower Frances Haugen and other company employees, my book reveals the architecture of Meta’s failures and internal employee efforts to fix them.
Such well-intentioned work often foundered against Meta’s relentless drive for growth, a culture of slapdash engineering and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s conviction that Facebook merely reflected its users desires — despite compelling internal research to the contrary.
While disillusioned employees generally drifted off quietly, Haugen took a different approach. This excerpt tells the story of my unusual working relationship with the Facebook product manager, who moved to Puerto Rico shortly before embarking on a document collection binge that would unearth years of corporate secrets.
Just after the 2020 election I had blind messaged Frances Haugen and a couple dozen of her colleagues at Civic, the team that worked on disinformation, coordinated manipulation, and other politics-related problems that arose on Facebook’s platforms. The note sent via LinkedIn said I was familiar with the team’s work, knew there was internal tension around it, and thought their efforts deserved attention.
In accordance with company rules on media contacts — and the nondisclosure agreement every...
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