The Woman Who Challenged Facebook With Its Own Data
Frances Haugen didn’t start out as an activist. She was an American engineer, working in Silicon Valley, on a brilliant career path. In 2019 she joined Facebook as a product manager. Her job was to analyze the algorithms that decide what we see every day in our feeds.
Then came the discovery. In the internal documents she studied, it was written clearly: Instagram was harming teenagers’ mental health. And the most extreme political and social content was being pushed by the algorithm because it generated more clicks. The conflict was brutal: stay silent to protect her career, or expose the most powerful toxic system on the planet.
Frances chose to act. She copied thousands of internal files and in 2021 brought them to the U.S. Congress. That was the fall. She exposed herself, lost her job, and became “the Facebook whistleblower.” She faced attacks, criticism, threats. But she didn’t stop.
The return with the gift was enormous. Thanks to those documents, we know that behind likes there aren’t just photos and memes, but a system that manipulates emotions and divides communities. Haugen’s hearings, here in Washington and broadcast worldwide, opened millions of eyes and forced governments and institutions to rethink the rules of digital platforms.
Frances started out as a systems engineer. She returned as a civic hero, leaving us with a clear gift: the truth about the dark side of algorithms.
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC
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