Facebook Whistleblower on Mark Zuckerberg, Meta AI and The Social Reckoning

Frances Haugen (0:00)

There's a running joke about Silicon Valley, where if you have a problem held by an affluent 25-year-old single man, there will probably be a good startup that will try to address that problem.

Katie Prescott (0:13)

Hello, and welcome to the interview from Times Tech, our weekly conversation with the people shaping the future of technology. I'm Katie Prescott.

Danny Fortson (0:21)

And I am Danny Fortson. And this week, I've been speaking to Frances Haugen, friend of the pod, the former Facebook employee who blew the whistle on the company back in 2021

Katie Prescott (0:33)

I was going to say, I remember you spoke to her at the time, because this was an enormous story when she released thousands of internal documents from Facebook and exposed all of these extraordinary things, which she said were a culture of prioritizing profit over the safety of users. And Mark Zuckerberg, we should say, denied all the allegations that she made.

Danny Fortson (0:55)

Yeah, and she ended up testifying in Congress, and there was a series of stories in the Wall Street Journal based on the documents that she purloined. And now that story, which also led to Zuckerberg being hauled in front of Congress and lots of public outrage, that story has now been made into a film called The Social Reckoning, which is really kind of like a sequel to The Social Network, which told the story of how Facebook first came to be from young Mark Zuckerberg starting out at Harvard.

Katie Prescott (1:29)

Gosh, those halcyon days and the way he was portrayed as this forward thinking entrepreneur, it feels so strange now to think back to that. I remember how I felt using Facebook for the first time, seeing that film for the first time. And then now with all of the concerns there are about the impact of social media, we've spoken a lot about how we feel about that with our kids, but also the very many court cases that have been brought against Meta over the years and until so very recently as well.

Danny Fortson (2:00)

Yeah, and timing-wise, just for context, and we talked about it on the pod, Meta just agreed to pay up to $17 billion to settle allegations.

Katie Prescott (2:11)

Yeah, and agreed to change their product as well.

Danny Fortson (2:14)

Yeah, they've denied any wrongdoing, but they're like, we're gonna pay up to $17 billion. We want the other social media companies to change their practices as well. And we're gonna change our product, but we didn't do anything wrong. So that movie comes out this week. So we thought it would be a great time to get Frances back on to talk about what she did then and what she has seen since. So here is my conversation with Frances Haugen.

Frances, hi, how are you?

Frances Haugen (2:48)

Hi, I'm good, how are you?

Danny Fortson (2:50)

I'm great. Thank you for taking the time. I have lots of questions you may or may not recall, but you and I spoke three years ago-ish. You had just come out with your book, The Power of One, which recounted your whole experience, coming out as a Facebook whistleblower and getting all of these documents out with your digital camera, working with Jeff Horowitz at the Wall Street Journal, etc.

I wanted to start now that we are here, well, I think it's five years after those stories first ran.

We have been talking on the pod a lot about, and I've actually been covering the Meta trial here in Oakland. So I've been in and out of the courtroom, and obviously we covered the $17 billion settlement with, I think it's 47, state attorneys general, and really about this core idea that you were alleging all those years ago. And it must be said, Meta denies any wrongdoing. They're just like, we're just gonna spend $18 billion because it's the right thing to do. But I'd love to just get your sense of one, that settlement. And is there any sense of vindication of, you know, you were in Congress on 60 Minutes, saying these things five years ago, and just would love to get your thoughts on kind of where we've got to.

Frances Haugen (4:12)

I have to say, like, the thing that's been kind of like eye-opening for me about the settlements, because just for your listeners' sake, they never know how much people have been following them, what level of detail. So we have the AG settlement, we have the school district settlement, which is still underway. So that's a bunch of school districts alleging they had to pay more for security and counselors and tutoring because of disruptions from social media. We have individual parents and families of kids who have been hurt, and that's at state levels and at federal levels. So there's a bunch of court cases that have not completed yet, and then there is this multi-state lawsuit that has completed. And in the process of just the lawsuits that have wrapped, a lot of exhibits have been released to the public. And when I came forward, maybe only 10% of the documents I brought out were about kids. So we're talking thousands of pages.