Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be a whistleblower? And how
Speaker 1: do we treat women who speak out against wrongdoing? Right now,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard of Francis Hogan, the former Facebook employee
Speaker 1: turned whistleblower who collected information for a series of expose
Speaker 1: a s about the harm that Facebook has called in
Speaker 1: our communities and around the globe. My name is Francis Howgan.
Speaker 1: I used to work on Facebook. I joined Facebook because
Speaker 1: I think Facebook has the potential to bring out the
Speaker 1: best in US. But I'm here today because I believe
Speaker 1: Facebook's products harm children, stoke division, and weak in our democracy.
Speaker 1: This week, her findings will be rolled out in what's
Speaker 1: being called the Facebook Papers, a series of coordinated stories
Speaker 1: and seventeen different media outlets by sased on the internal
Speaker 1: documents she photographed during her time working at Facebook. But
Speaker 1: how can isn't the first woman to blow the whistle
Speaker 1: on Facebook. In September, a year before Halgan spoke out,
Speaker 1: Sophie's on a woman of color who worked as a
Speaker 1: data scientist at Facebook uncovered that Facebook was slow to
Speaker 1: act or in some cases did nothing at all about
Speaker 1: coordinated fake campaigns by foreign governments that were manipulating citizens
Speaker 1: and destabilizing democracies. Only when Sophie spoke up, she didn't
Speaker 1: get to testify before the Senate or go on sixty
Speaker 1: minutes to tell the world what she found, and in
Speaker 1: some cases media outlets didn't even refer to her as
Speaker 1: a whistleblower, just some former employee. Sophie is the kind
Speaker 1: of person who would rather be at home playing with
Speaker 1: her two cats than doing interviews, but that hasn't stopped her.
Speaker 1: She continues to speak up, including recently testifying before Parliament
Speaker 1: in the UK. When a whistle blower speaks up, we
Speaker 1: all see the polished interviews and here the snappy soundbites,
Speaker 1: but Sophie wants people to know the reality that whistle
Speaker 1: blowing can be thankless dangerous, personally costly work. Here Sophie story.
Speaker 1: So if you're jung Street her cat Petter, that's absolutely why,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely why you wanted you might meet to speak right.
Speaker 1: He just wanted me to go along at lengths about
Speaker 1: how getting my cats are and how I had them. Actually,
Speaker 1: actually you probably know me about you as a whistleblower
Speaker 1: and former Facebook employee. So Sophie, I have to ask,
Speaker 1: just before we get into everything, just with everything that's
Speaker 1: going on with the Facebook and your your role in
Speaker 1: whistle blowing, how are you, like, are you feeling supported?
Speaker 1: Are you feeling overwhelmed? You know how Sophie doing and
Speaker 1: momstly feeling in a bit overwhelmed, But like I don't
Speaker 1: In case you didn't know, I'm an introvert who hates
Speaker 1: any and attention and hates the public spotlight and just
Speaker 1: wants to stay home and put my cats and and
Speaker 1: so frankly, I sort of wish that they had gotten
Speaker 1: a pr FAM or something, if not in us. Judging
Speaker 1: by the difference in responses, I did, I mean, I did,
Speaker 1: I did ask for I did ask for one. When
Speaker 1: I was starting that they turned me down and they
Speaker 1: decided that I would yellow it. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: you're knowing this does not work. Let me tell you that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's actually a great place to start, you know,
Speaker 1: as someone who is an introvert, as someone who is
Speaker 1: not really that interested in being in the public eye,
Speaker 1: what has it been like navigating this experience as someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't really want to put themselves out there like that,
Speaker 1: it's been difficult, it's it's it's it's honestly a bit
Speaker 1: like potent taste. But I mean, I think many people
Speaker 1: can relate to the experience in general of doing something
Speaker 1: that they don't need to, don't want to do because
Speaker 1: it's important. Like I think most people don't want to
Speaker 1: wake up but it's x am in the morning to
Speaker 1: go into the office or something like that. But most
Speaker 1: but money people do it anyways, and because they need
Speaker 1: to make a living to survive. And and I see
Speaker 1: this just another version of the same thing, like there
Speaker 1: are parts that they were surprised at how well I do,
Speaker 1: like Frank the Frank Thee. When I started, my greatest
Speaker 1: worry was that I would have a panic attack on
Speaker 1: life national television or something. And there's other things that
Speaker 1: I'm doing about myself, like apparently I study when I'm
Speaker 1: never in an interview or something like that, which is
Speaker 1: which I mean I don't usually do in everyday conversation.
Speaker 1: And there's not that I noticed that's actually a good
Speaker 1: thing to point out. I feel like people don't realize
Speaker 1: the cost, like the personal cost of whistleblowing, that it
Speaker 1: comes with a lot of work, a lot of physical stress,
Speaker 1: a lot of challenges, and when you do it, you
Speaker 1: are kind of taking a lot on that. I don't
Speaker 1: think people really see people. People just want to see
Speaker 1: this like polished, eloquent person speaking truth, but then they
Speaker 1: don't see the stress and the physical manifestations of what
Speaker 1: that looks like. Yes, I'm not polished or under quin
Speaker 1: Actually I have a bit of a t on my
Speaker 1: face right here. My personal excuse is that I have
Speaker 1: nothing to hide from the people of the world. That
Speaker 1: is my cause for not wearing makeup. It's easy to
Speaker 1: think of tech employees is having tons of lucrative job
Speaker 1: opportunities at the ready, But that wasn't really a sofie situation.
Speaker 1: In fact, when she first started working at Facebook, she
Speaker 1: just kind of needed a job, and Facebook, with its
Speaker 1: massive influence on all of our lives, well, here was
Speaker 1: a chance, she thought to make some real change, to
Speaker 1: have a hand in making Facebook a real tool for
Speaker 1: good from the inside something. What brought you to working
Speaker 1: in tech? How did you wind up working at Facebook
Speaker 1: in the first place. Frankly, I needed the job to
Speaker 1: make money to survive. I applied to a lot of faces.
Speaker 1: Facebook gave me an offer. It's the honest explanation. I
Speaker 1: applied to a bunch of them, and I was expecting
Speaker 1: a few others two. Except if I had waited a bit,
Speaker 1: maybe I would've gotten some more offers, but Facebook had offered.
Speaker 1: It was and and honestly, I was also partly motivated
Speaker 1: because they wanted to help fix Facebook. Because it's easy
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, especially in America in the
Speaker 1: United States, to say we should just quit Facebook and
Speaker 1: not use it. But that's not an option for many
Speaker 1: people in most of the world. In parts of for instance,
Speaker 1: rural India. In Africa, for instance, Facebook is essentially the
Speaker 1: Internet and people do not have the option to leave it.
Speaker 1: And so by refusing to work for a company like this,
Speaker 1: you essentially really inquation any influence that you could have
Speaker 1: over it. And they saw it was important for me
Speaker 1: to try and fix the company from the inside, to
Speaker 1: give the chance at least and they think they did
Speaker 1: accomplishout more the boy I was there, then then they
Speaker 1: would have been able to from outside the company. For instance,
Speaker 1: they took down the troll farm operations of two separate
Speaker 1: road governments, and ultimately a lot of people have made
Speaker 1: that consideration. Like when they joined Facebook until them a
Speaker 1: dancing Facebook was good for the world and was trying
Speaker 1: to try and fix it. They told me, you'd be
Speaker 1: surprised how many people feel that way. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to say that the most people, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of people just want to do their do their nineties
Speaker 1: and go home at the end of the day, which
Speaker 1: is perfectly understandable. Like I knew people who were, for instance,
Speaker 1: on HMMB visas, which means that their residency is tied
Speaker 1: to employment and so for instance, and some of them
Speaker 1: were unhappy that's a situation, but didn't feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: speaking out because if they did, they could get fired
Speaker 1: and immediately deported back home. Now the cases, maybe people
Speaker 1: have families that they need to support back home, maybe
Speaker 1: they have sacredatives, maybe they maybe they have children or
Speaker 1: etceuter And like with up blowing, is not for everyone.
Speaker 1: You take on certain risks both financially, go personal, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And even rocking the boat is not something that many
Speaker 1: people do not feel comfortable with. But but they are
Speaker 1: certainly also people at Facebook who feel strongly about fixing
Speaker 1: the system, or at least did and try to worry
Speaker 1: how to do so. All they were there, Many of
Speaker 1: them have since left the company. Some of them have
Speaker 1: spoken out to varying extents, like there's always going to
Speaker 1: be a self selection bias, by which I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think Facebook is a double you're that's likely to
Speaker 1: work for Facebook. If you think the Facebook is the
Speaker 1: greatest thing since slight spread, you are more likely to
Speaker 1: work for Facebook. If you think that podcasts are evil,
Speaker 1: you are not likely if you start a podcast or
Speaker 1: or listen to one. And so the people I am
Speaker 1: who are listening now probably do not have negative opinions
Speaker 1: about podcasts, and and that sort of self seduction bias
Speaker 1: happens in everything. Like Facebook did regular surveys of how
Speaker 1: many how many events employees thought that Facebook was making
Speaker 1: the road better? That number, that number fluctuated between fifty
Speaker 1: and seventy. Boy, it was there, it was, It was
Speaker 1: on the higher end. Earlier on it was much though
Speaker 1: it got towards fifty million left. And that may sound
Speaker 1: very high to you, but it's also important to remember
Speaker 1: we have a certain advantage coming from the United States
Speaker 1: and Europe, presumably like series have generally some show people
Speaker 1: much more positive on facebooking countries like Indonesia compared to
Speaker 1: the United States, where the mood is very negative, because
Speaker 1: for many people, Facebook is the Internet. It's the way
Speaker 1: that they connect to people, and they aren't any other options,
Speaker 1: any other awainabilities like there is here. Well, working at Facebook,
Speaker 1: Sophie found that foreign governments in places like India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia,
Speaker 1: and Ecuador have been using big Facebook accounts to generate
Speaker 1: fake engagement to manipulate their citizens. She found evidence of
Speaker 1: cordated campaigns doing this in an attempt to manipulate political
Speaker 1: outcomes and to help or hinder certain political leaders. And
Speaker 1: even though this was technically against Facebook's rules, there really
Speaker 1: wasn't anybody whose job it was to stop it. So
Speaker 1: Sophie decided to do it herself. On top of her
Speaker 1: official job at Facebook, she worked to flag these fake accounts. Now,
Speaker 1: if you asked me, I would say that Facebook probably
Speaker 1: should have given her a raise and thanked her for
Speaker 1: doing this extra work to make their platform that much
Speaker 1: more secure, But they fired her instead. When you started uncovering,
Speaker 1: you know what Facebook calls this in authentic behavior? Um,
Speaker 1: you basically were like, oh, you know, we know this
Speaker 1: is happening, but no one's really enforcing a policy against
Speaker 1: curbing it. And so you kind of single handedly made
Speaker 1: that your business even though it wasn't really like technically
Speaker 1: your job. Did you feel sort of motivated by like
Speaker 1: an internal system, like an internal more like system of morality?
Speaker 1: Were you like, well, this is wrong and I had
Speaker 1: to stop this, Like what motivated you to take this on?
Speaker 1: Facebook has no official slogans, that's nothing that Facebook. It's
Speaker 1: someone else's problem. And that was always what I used
Speaker 1: that internally as an excuse. And what this means, it's
Speaker 1: that when you see something wrong, you don't assume it's
Speaker 1: someone else's problem. You don't see someone else is fixed,
Speaker 1: will fix it. Because when you do that, a round's
Speaker 1: like all that came. Person can fix it. That person
Speaker 1: can fix it. I'm not doing it myself. And the
Speaker 1: idea is that when you see something wrong, you stop
Speaker 1: in and fix it yourself. And this is a slogan,
Speaker 1: of course it is that's not actually get obeyed very much,
Speaker 1: but I mean it gave me some official cover where
Speaker 1: I was there. Ultimately, of course, I was personally motivated
Speaker 1: to do this, I mean it fell in a gray area.
Speaker 1: I could argue it was within my preview even though
Speaker 1: it's what I was expecting to do. Do you think
Speaker 1: that your work trying to combat these inauthentic profiles? Do
Speaker 1: you think that that's why Facebook let you go? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I cannot read minds. They don't know the
Speaker 1: decisions that were made by people higher up. Like I
Speaker 1: know people who believe that I was let go for
Speaker 1: this reason. It's hard to meet to personally saying like
Speaker 1: the facial reason I was let go, of course, was
Speaker 1: under performance. The way I would personally describe this is
Speaker 1: that it fell into two separate areas. The first was
Speaker 1: that in the second half of twenty nineteen, during performance
Speaker 1: reviews this season, it was officially decided that the work
Speaker 1: I was doing outside what my manager told me to
Speaker 1: do did not count for my performance, and as the result,
Speaker 1: I was under performing. The second part of it is that,
Speaker 1: of course, the pandemic hit in twenty twenty. This resulted
Speaker 1: in many people working from home. This result, I mean,
Speaker 1: many people had a lot of difficulty with it. I
Speaker 1: was one of them. My mental health and performance suffered,
Speaker 1: so I was actually anti performing them and Facebook pad
Speaker 1: in the official policy that in the first half of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty they would treat everyone as exceeding expectations because
Speaker 1: you are exceeding our expectations by doing sover and braving
Speaker 1: it through the pandemic or something like that. In my case,
Speaker 1: they decided how over that, because I was already officially
Speaker 1: engine performing before the pandemic, they didn't want to give
Speaker 1: me the way that they would for others. And they
Speaker 1: hopefully makes sense, like Facebook is a company at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, and ultimately they hired me to
Speaker 1: do a specific job that they was trying to do
Speaker 1: in addition to this at the same time, and as
Speaker 1: anyone who's tried to hold down multiple full time jobs
Speaker 1: at the same time can tell you, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to do that. Well, let's say, click right at her back.
Speaker 1: When an employee leaves Facebook, it's common for them to
Speaker 1: write what's called a badge post, a goodbye memo published
Speaker 1: on workplace, which is kind of like Facebook's internal Facebook
Speaker 1: for Facebook employees. Now, usually these posts are typical goodbye, fair,
Speaker 1: it's been great working with you, keep in touch. Only
Speaker 1: Sophie didn't do that. Instead, he posted a seven thousand
Speaker 1: ish word screed laying out exactly what she'd seen during
Speaker 1: her time at Facebook. In the three years I've spent
Speaker 1: at Facebook, I found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national
Speaker 1: governments to abuse our platform on a vast scales to
Speaker 1: mislead their own citizen read and caused international news on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions, she wrote, I have personally made decisions that
Speaker 1: affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce
Speaker 1: against so many prominent politicians globally that I've lost count.
Speaker 1: I have blood on my hands. So you leave Facebook.
Speaker 1: When you're leaving, you published an internal memo as you're like, goodbye, badge,
Speaker 1: and I guess I have to ask, what is going
Speaker 1: through your head when you hit published? In this memo
Speaker 1: you talk about having blood on you see that you
Speaker 1: have blood on your hands. I mean, this memo was
Speaker 1: earth shattering. What's going through your mind when you hit published? Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was probably that it was very sleepily proved. You're
Speaker 1: that I mean, And I stayed up from midnight until
Speaker 1: eight am that morning. Right in the memo, there was
Speaker 1: that second decision. And there's anyone who has taken an
Speaker 1: old lighte too to write something can tell you you're
Speaker 1: the result is not going to be the greatest. And
Speaker 1: I took a quick four hour nap after that because
Speaker 1: I cannot actually function on no sleep, unlike some people.
Speaker 1: Am very jaendous of the people who can. But then again,
Speaker 1: I don't drink coffee. Maybe they should have. And so
Speaker 1: I posted it like an hour or two before and left.
Speaker 1: So this is a bit of a tradition at Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's called the badge post. When you leave in the company,
Speaker 1: you post a picture of your employee badge and you
Speaker 1: put and you write something with it. It's usually it's
Speaker 1: not usually as controversial as mine, of course. Oftentimes it's
Speaker 1: just brought statement I was so happy to work with
Speaker 1: all of you. You are all great. I am like,
Speaker 1: I am going to Pinterest next, I'm doing this. I
Speaker 1: thank you for being part of my journey. And but
Speaker 1: sometimes they are also more controversial and people have criticized
Speaker 1: the company's in the bag posts before, like several employees
Speaker 1: started the idea of hosting a password protected copy on
Speaker 1: an external website and only sharing the password and link
Speaker 1: with within't initial badge post. This was after the company
Speaker 1: had taken down a few small controversial internal badge posts.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that if you share the Lincoln password,
Speaker 1: then people can share that even after the company takes
Speaker 1: down your internal post, and this were dissuade them from
Speaker 1: doing so and etcetera. So the initial reaction was mostly
Speaker 1: from people at other people who did not read the
Speaker 1: memo because because reading so and solves an eight words,
Speaker 1: it's a very time consuming affair. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of initial expressions of support and etcetera. There's of course
Speaker 1: a self seleuction bias, by which I mean people are
Speaker 1: usually fairly prodite and not super rude, and if you
Speaker 1: have a coworker that hits you your guts and you're
Speaker 1: leaving the company, they are probably not going to go
Speaker 1: up to your faith and say, oh my god, you're
Speaker 1: finally leaving and I'm so tired of you. You're e
Speaker 1: EO and finally rate of you and start going to
Speaker 1: be finally she's gone quietly and not tell you anything.
Speaker 1: And the people who are like were like, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry you're gone. They will they will tell you that.
Speaker 1: So that's what I mean by self selection bias. But
Speaker 1: there were certainly people who were very sad to hear
Speaker 1: me gone, and they were certainly people who were exlad
Speaker 1: to hear about the details. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: there was anyone who was like more ha ha if
Speaker 1: I only got read of her, but I mean again't
Speaker 1: read minds. And so anyways, the company took down the
Speaker 1: Internet workplace post if you always after I posted it,
Speaker 1: and then then they called me asking me to take
Speaker 1: it down from a website. I told them they would
Speaker 1: do that if they restored the Internet work they suppost.
Speaker 1: They they demoge and the next thing I heard from
Speaker 1: them was tomorrow when I was told that my website
Speaker 1: had been taken down. A few days later they got
Speaker 1: made domain taken down to by the registroies. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure the lawyers were very bity that weekend. There was
Speaker 1: a big employee bagdash because this is not typical at Facebook.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's been changing, but Facebook has historically
Speaker 1: been a very open company. That's why we had access
Speaker 1: as employees to talk to other employees. It's so much
Speaker 1: at the same time, that's why was able to brief
Speaker 1: a company vice president about the problem in the first plates.
Speaker 1: And so, like most organizations, there's intrinsic conflict when it
Speaker 1: stated goes coming conflict with the selfish motive. The Internet
Speaker 1: version was restored after some adict after some adicts and etcetera.
Speaker 1: To the employee back that I think the official statement
Speaker 1: from the company was that they took it down because
Speaker 1: it contained a linked because it contained a linked to
Speaker 1: sensitive Internet documentation outside of outside of outside of the
Speaker 1: company reach. And they restored it after I agree to
Speaker 1: take it down, which is something that makes them look
Speaker 1: reasonable and also connot be contradicted with me because they
Speaker 1: no longer had the audience. I know that Facebook offered
Speaker 1: you a severance if you sign an NDA. Is there
Speaker 1: any part of you? Is there, like a version of
Speaker 1: you that would have signed that? Not really? I mean
Speaker 1: maybe maybe if I wasn't considering doing anything of this,
Speaker 1: maybe if I maybe I was just doing the ninety
Speaker 1: and the first place. But then this without being very
Speaker 1: rid of front like they offered me about sixty four
Speaker 1: assaults into the oars for in a severance package. They've
Speaker 1: had a lot of stipulations. One of them was in
Speaker 1: the eight non nonisparishment agreement, etcetera. And so these are
Speaker 1: usually worded very These are often worded very broadly in
Speaker 1: tech companies. In my in mind, my recollection of the
Speaker 1: nondisparishment agreement was saying, basically, I couldn't criticize the company
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form, and and this was
Speaker 1: extremely broad and so I'm going to give an example
Speaker 1: of of how how broadly the supplies. And so, of course,
Speaker 1: a week or two ago Facebook went down wrote wide
Speaker 1: for a few hours. Suppose that during that time period
Speaker 1: someone asked me, Hey, I see Facebook is down. Is
Speaker 1: it down for you too? And they check, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't face access Facebook either. It's done. At that moment,
Speaker 1: I am technically in violation of a nonisparishment agreement because
Speaker 1: I have said something critical on Facebook. But I mean
Speaker 1: not that they would average too to enforce it, because
Speaker 1: I would be ridiculous. But that's because but that it
Speaker 1: is technically some ten negative or critical about Facebook, that's
Speaker 1: the series is stung you. And if it's even if
Speaker 1: it's public to accessible information or something, it's just that
Speaker 1: it's worded extremely broadly. And that was my official reason
Speaker 1: for not signing it. Had the time which this seemed
Speaker 1: pretty promused by but accepted before she was fired from Facebook.
Speaker 1: Sophie was pretty much single handedly trying to keep foreign
Speaker 1: governments from of using the platform to manipulate their citizen
Speaker 1: ring with no oversight whatsoever. I was left in a
Speaker 1: situation where I was trusted with immense influence in my
Speaker 1: spare time, Sophie said in her badge post, a manager
Speaker 1: at once teaser saying that most of the world outside
Speaker 1: of the United States was effectively the Wild West, making
Speaker 1: her their part time dictator. He meant a statement to
Speaker 1: be a compliment, Sophie writes, but it illustrated the immense
Speaker 1: pressure upon me. She started thinking, I can't be the
Speaker 1: only person on the planet who is responsible for this information.
Speaker 1: What if something happens to me? What if I get
Speaker 1: hit by a car? And kind of by coincidence, she
Speaker 1: encountered Julia Carey Wak, an accomplished tech reporter for The
Speaker 1: Guardian US, and that's how our findings reached a new audience.
Speaker 1: Someone things already talking to Julia. It was two years
Speaker 1: ago now before this had happened. It was very coincidental.
Speaker 1: The first time I met with her in person, I
Speaker 1: wasn't intending to put out the way, so it was
Speaker 1: more I was setting up because I mean single points
Speaker 1: of fender are bad. What happens if you get run
Speaker 1: away by a car the next day or is untra it?
Speaker 1: So I was taking it was intentionally contingency. I gave
Speaker 1: you some information and made your promise not to use
Speaker 1: any of it and unless there was study was something.
Speaker 1: She promised that she wouldn't try to kill me with something.
Speaker 1: I'm joking. It's a good promise to get before, even
Speaker 1: before you like spill everything doing journalists. Of course I
Speaker 1: am joking. And any ways, and this was in Oakland.
Speaker 1: I arranged with some friends to be in my other
Speaker 1: by as they agreed that if anyone asked, I was
Speaker 1: at the cost petting the cats the entire time. This
Speaker 1: is something I actually visited for at other times I
Speaker 1: went to I went to oak and then dropped off
Speaker 1: of my electronic devices with them. I'd also dressed up.
Speaker 1: I also I had also dressed up in a cute dress.
Speaker 1: I do not fear dresses almost ever. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that was if anyone from if I ran into
Speaker 1: anyone I knew by coincidence and they could contradict my
Speaker 1: first undy by then, hey you see someone, They're sneaking around. Unusually,
Speaker 1: they also dressed up pretty and usually nights. What is
Speaker 1: this thing that goes through your head with the assumption
Speaker 1: right exactly, So that so that was my second other bye.
Speaker 1: I was really I was having a thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't necessary in the end of course,
Speaker 1: I mean went into anyone And it was just that
Speaker 1: was a paranoia alst name a bit surprised that Francis
Speaker 1: Hoagan got away with digg into work place as much
Speaker 1: as she did, but it but it sort of makes
Speaker 1: sense because Facebook is fundamentally it's fundamentally company that respondsed
Speaker 1: these things rather than acting proactively like as I've criticized
Speaker 1: for it many times before, because they could have easily
Speaker 1: called sults, looked into people who were taking into many
Speaker 1: documents outside the important areas, outside the area of expertise.
Speaker 1: But apparently that they didn't do that. They only apparently
Speaker 1: they only do that when it becomes a pr crisis
Speaker 1: by the time but and and it's too late, which
Speaker 1: has been the practiced in many other cases much more
Speaker 1: important to the road and democracy. So it's supposed to
Speaker 1: say around that it's their own that it's apparently the
Speaker 1: practice for interne security and and and employee monitoring as well.
Speaker 1: If you're going to blow the whistle on a powerful institution,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of practical things to consider, like should
Speaker 1: you take screenshots on your work computer or phone? No,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't use end and encrypted systems like signal on
Speaker 1: your personal devices, Sofie suggests. There are bigger picture questions too,
Speaker 1: like what should you do about money? Sophie says it
Speaker 1: consider saving up before you go public, or how should
Speaker 1: you protect yourself from harassment? So if you suggests using
Speaker 1: a service like delete me to scrub your public information
Speaker 1: from the web beforehand. Now, at the time, there weren't
Speaker 1: really a lot of go to guides for how to
Speaker 1: blow the whistle, But now women like Sophie are helping
Speaker 1: to protect and guide the next generation of whistleblowers who
Speaker 1: hold the powerful accountable. There weren't any guides for how
Speaker 1: to do list at the time I was making it
Speaker 1: do up non I eventually wrote the wrote the guide.
Speaker 1: You might have seen it, Turner. I mean by by
Speaker 1: now other people have written guys. Your guys are so helpful,
Speaker 1: you know, as something that I really appreciated in your
Speaker 1: guide is that you talk about how you know whistleblowing
Speaker 1: is not for everybody. Is not everybody can do this,
Speaker 1: Not everybody would want to take on that kind of
Speaker 1: scrutiny that you might get when you do this, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that's just a really useful point that it's
Speaker 1: really not for everybody. Yeah, Like, like I've been askband
Speaker 1: all the people, and the first thing I always tell
Speaker 1: them is that it's a personal decision. Because it's very
Speaker 1: easy from the outside for people to judge, for people
Speaker 1: to say, you shouldn't have stayed at the company that's known,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be working here, you should be coming forward,
Speaker 1: you be talking to the press, etcetera. But but but
Speaker 1: but it's different from this personal Different people have personal situations,
Speaker 1: like even just turning down a two dollar a year job.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's very difficult. So many people have many
Speaker 1: people are impart of rich situations. Maybe they have specific circumstances,
Speaker 1: and it's not my place to judge them for not
Speaker 1: doing what I did. No one is obligated to immolate
Speaker 1: their career and torture themselves on the period of world
Speaker 1: opinion for the for the purpose of for for for this.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's something we can reason. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's something we can reasonably expecting many In most
Speaker 1: cases this podcast, it's all about identity, how our identities
Speaker 1: really make the difference when it comes to our experiences
Speaker 1: in tech and how we show up online. And the
Speaker 1: same thing is true whistle blowers, and I feel like
Speaker 1: we're really seeing that play out in real time. The
Speaker 1: more marginalized you are, the more fraught speaking up can be.
Speaker 1: Sophie says that one of the biggest parts of her
Speaker 1: identity that is presented a challenge in her whistle blowing
Speaker 1: is the fact that she's kind of introverted. When I
Speaker 1: said earlier that Sophie prefers hanging out with her cats
Speaker 1: to giving interviews, well I really meant it. You'll even
Speaker 1: hear a guest appearance from her cat midnight later on
Speaker 1: in our conversation. It's really not difficult for me to
Speaker 1: see the ways that Sophie is being publicly treated because
Speaker 1: of her intersecting identities. Even in a lot of well
Speaker 1: meaning reporting, I've noticed that some just can't help trying
Speaker 1: to pick whistle blower Francis Hagen against Sophie and obviously
Speaker 1: sexist framing two women can't possibly both be speaking up
Speaker 1: without there being some kind of cat right between them, right,
Speaker 1: and what's worse, Some simply erased Sophie altogether, implying instead
Speaker 1: that Francis is the real whistle blower, while Sophie is
Speaker 1: just some disgruntled former employee who was fired for being
Speaker 1: bad at her job. After Francis went public, I saw
Speaker 1: a flurry of headlines about Sophie saying a second Facebook
Speaker 1: whistle blower has come forward, even though Sophie actually spoke
Speaker 1: out a full year earlier than Francis did. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of the rub. We don't have to buy into
Speaker 1: these limiting narratives about whose voice matters and whose voice doesn't.
Speaker 1: And we have got to believe in a world where
Speaker 1: there's a room for more than one woman to speak
Speaker 1: truth to power. Our identities shouldn't keep us from being heard.
Speaker 1: Something that I'm really struck by, and that you talk
Speaker 1: about a lot on this show, is the way that
Speaker 1: our identities really intersect when we're talking about these things.
Speaker 1: And I firmly believe that whistleblowing is an identity issue
Speaker 1: that like, the more marginalized you are, the trickier it
Speaker 1: can be. So if you're a trans woman, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be harder for you. If you're a woman of color
Speaker 1: or a black woman, it might be harder for you.
Speaker 1: Has that been your experience as you have have your
Speaker 1: identities made this experience of being a whistleblower fraud the
Speaker 1: identity that has made it the most difficult. It's being
Speaker 1: an introy who hates attention. I would say in that
Speaker 1: I don't think it was surprised anyone to say if
Speaker 1: if you hate it, if you hate attention and want
Speaker 1: nothing to do with attention, and they're doing this like
Speaker 1: like having tea suport, you'll be less good at getting
Speaker 1: attention and like frank Day should have gotten a pr
Speaker 1: firm and but like like almost at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's it's hard. It's hard for me to say.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to say how different people have
Speaker 1: responded differently based based based on my message and who
Speaker 1: I and who I am. Like, I'm happy that France
Speaker 1: States has come forward so so so so that's Frankly,
Speaker 1: someone who is more photogenic, and that's of a introvert
Speaker 1: who wants to hide at home, can be kind of
Speaker 1: the torch past to them and can be and can
Speaker 1: speak out publicly in my study, because I was never
Speaker 1: the right person from this from the very start, and
Speaker 1: they never wanted to be. That's so interesting. I mean
Speaker 1: I've seen, I mean from following your tweets, I've seen
Speaker 1: folks will be like, oh, former Facebook employee out there there.
Speaker 1: It's a bit yeah, this is Midnight again. It's a
Speaker 1: bit funny that I'm just being described as a second
Speaker 1: twistle floor Now, yeah, I mean pizza, I mean europe
Speaker 1: thinks I'm first time. I testified to the European Pintament
Speaker 1: last year, and I'm testifying to the UK Parinnament next week.
Speaker 1: But the u S is America, the u S. It's
Speaker 1: the center of the road, of course. And anyways, here
Speaker 1: is Midnight. He's much more important than myself. He's just
Speaker 1: a beautiful cat. He's very dedicated to food. And yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes when he emails, I can imagine, I imagine protest slogans,
Speaker 1: what do we want? Food? We wanted? Now I would
Speaker 1: join Midnight's protests. I'm also very food motivated, so I
Speaker 1: would join that program. Well, maybe he wants equal access
Speaker 1: to food for a veryvere more. After a quick break,
Speaker 1: let's get right back into it. When I was coming
Speaker 1: of age on the Internet. America, Online basically was the Internet.
Speaker 1: It was the end all and be all of how
Speaker 1: I got online, and in many countries, the same is
Speaker 1: true of Facebook, particularly in the Global South, where text
Speaker 1: messages and cellular data is expensive. Facebook's messaging platform What's App,
Speaker 1: is the way that most people communicate digitally. According to
Speaker 1: data from the Brazilian technology news and research website Mobile Time,
Speaker 1: nearly half of Brazilian say What's App is their most
Speaker 1: used app, followed by Facebook and Facebook owned Instagram. In
Speaker 1: countries like Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, Argentina, Malaysia and Colombia,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. So for all the harm that
Speaker 1: Facebook is called in the United States, it's the version
Speaker 1: of Facebook that Westerners used that is actually kind of
Speaker 1: the best version of the platform that's out there, which
Speaker 1: is pretty sad. As Ellen Cushing reported in The Atlantic
Speaker 1: as part of the Facebook papers, It's the version made
Speaker 1: by people who speak our language and understand our customs,
Speaker 1: who take our civic problems seriously because those problems are
Speaker 1: the as too. It's the version that exists on a
Speaker 1: free internet, under a relatively stable government in a wealthy democracy.
Speaker 1: It's also the version to which Facebook dedicates the most
Speaker 1: moderation resources. Elsewhere, the documents show things are different and
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable parts of the world places with limited
Speaker 1: Internet access, where smaller user numbers mean bad actors have
Speaker 1: undue influence. The trade offs and mistakes that Facebook makes
Speaker 1: can have deadly consequences, and Sophie's whistle blowing really helps
Speaker 1: underscore these stark and dangerous differences between how Facebook operates
Speaker 1: in the West and how it operates in the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. And the problem is you kind of
Speaker 1: have to count on people in the West giving a
Speaker 1: ship about what happens in the rest of the world
Speaker 1: for it to make a real difference. In thinking about
Speaker 1: the amazing work that you've done pointing out the harms
Speaker 1: that Facebook was doing around the world. Do you ever
Speaker 1: feel that one of the reasons why, um, when you
Speaker 1: spoke out it didn't really rattle Facebook as much, is
Speaker 1: it because like we're kind of trade aim to not
Speaker 1: care about certain countries that you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: countries like India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador. Like, are
Speaker 1: we as Americans just sort of trained to like not
Speaker 1: give a crap what happens in these places. And so
Speaker 1: when you're blowing the whistle about the way that Facebook
Speaker 1: was being used to destabilize these places, people are just
Speaker 1: like or whatever I think. I think that's a large
Speaker 1: part of it. Like no one, I mean, no one
Speaker 1: says it's so crashily. But it's the case that Americans
Speaker 1: care more about the United States and other Americans, and
Speaker 1: most countries are the same way. In the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China, people care more about they found those Chinese citizens.
Speaker 1: Indians care more about other Indians, Turkeys, Turkey thinks that
Speaker 1: the road revolves around the Turkey. The Turks think that
Speaker 1: the road revolves around Turkey, etcetera. And and this is
Speaker 1: this is the way, this is the way that the
Speaker 1: road works. And so if if if if ten people
Speaker 1: die in in In, if ten people die in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: were treated much more seriously than if a hundred people
Speaker 1: die in banquet match. I mean, there's no one around
Speaker 1: adding adding adding notes to articles like a hundred people
Speaker 1: died in Bangladesh yesterday, parentheses the equivalent of five point
Speaker 1: two Americans and parentheses. But I mean, in practice, people
Speaker 1: do people, and in practice people do have this sort
Speaker 1: of mental calculation and approach. And this is extremely sad,
Speaker 1: unfortunately and sadly the way that the road is right now.
Speaker 1: But it's also true that it's also true that the
Speaker 1: road tends to change every time. Every time, Like I
Speaker 1: live and live with my girlfriend who's who's white, and
Speaker 1: our relationship would be legal on multiple accounts in California
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, like slavery was sadly commonplace in
Speaker 1: the United States, and hundred sixty a hundred sixty years ago,
Speaker 1: I mean there have been, there were, there are been
Speaker 1: words for over religion and and looking back we shake
Speaker 1: our heads and say, how could have we been so barbaric?
Speaker 1: It's a nature for each generation to look back and
Speaker 1: look back and check the head of their last, and
Speaker 1: they can't and they don't know the future. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it holds. But if I, if I want
Speaker 1: to speculated, guess, I would say that hundreds of years
Speaker 1: from now, when people look back on us today, but
Speaker 1: they will find most barbaric. It's the way we treat
Speaker 1: people differently based on factors as arbitrary as a nine
Speaker 1: strong arm map. When they were born mm hm. And
Speaker 1: they firmly believe that everyone should we have equal rights,
Speaker 1: and it should be treated equally, regardless of the national
Speaker 1: origin or other characteristics. But but that's me, and I'm
Speaker 1: an idea old list. I'd say part of the reason
Speaker 1: I haven't been listened to as much, it's also just
Speaker 1: that I dislike sound bites and and sensational its statements,
Speaker 1: and and they like nuance. And it's a nature of
Speaker 1: the current world that this is the opposite track from
Speaker 1: what you should take to get attention, if any as
Speaker 1: anyone who's done that, who's used social media can tell you, like,
Speaker 1: like some of some of the criticism about Facebook in
Speaker 1: the in the more right now is frankly a bit
Speaker 1: sensational list and not the most accurate. And that has
Speaker 1: been right. The criticis critics, right, they criticized, but they
Speaker 1: also want to But part of it also feels a
Speaker 1: bit iron like, because this is a world that Facebook built.
Speaker 1: This is what gets attention, and it's not surprising that
Speaker 1: that of the criticism and Facebook, this is what gets
Speaker 1: to train the first place. God, that's such a good
Speaker 1: point that, like they definitely traffic in the idea that
Speaker 1: what's the most sensational, what's the most polarizing, what's the
Speaker 1: most extreme that gets the most attention, and that economy
Speaker 1: that they have really propped up. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: it's not any wonder that people are defaulting too extreme
Speaker 1: statements about their platform. Yeah, Like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was intentional from the story from Facebook, but but
Speaker 1: but but certainly, but certainly a lot of people have
Speaker 1: the debt. It's a lot of people have the idea,
Speaker 1: have the idea that that that that there's that there
Speaker 1: dance and approach is inherently neutral somehow, and any evasion
Speaker 1: from it, it's it's is the it's is the is
Speaker 1: a dangerous change. And like, ultimately, I don't know if
Speaker 1: if Mike or others have ideological reasons for wanting that is,
Speaker 1: if it was just the idea, if it was just
Speaker 1: made in the most sense for making money that they
Speaker 1: justified or what. But it but it does seem pretty ironic,
Speaker 1: a bit ironic to me, even if it's pick God
Speaker 1: against the specific criticism that I find to be countraproductive
Speaker 1: or not not substantial. Yeah, so so you said earlier
Speaker 1: that you're an idealist when you think about Facebook, are you?
Speaker 1: Is there part of you that it's hopeful that do
Speaker 1: you think that it can be it can be saved,
Speaker 1: Can it be a force for good? Or is it
Speaker 1: just too late? Anything can be tooretically changed. The question is,
Speaker 1: though it happened, maybe Mike will have a change of
Speaker 1: hearty tomorrow. I can't read his mind, I can't read
Speaker 1: if future. But but but fundamentally, I think I realized
Speaker 1: that cynicism, and not only it's amazing work in the
Speaker 1: Mordern day, it's very attractive for people to say the
Speaker 1: road is fundamentally to only broken, then it can't be fixed.
Speaker 1: Therefore I'm not going to do anything, and thus it
Speaker 1: becomes the self a funning prophecy. And then you can
Speaker 1: say tho, like, look, look I was right. Nothing changed
Speaker 1: because in the end nothing, nothing will happen then and
Speaker 1: as and as we the people make it happen. If
Speaker 1: you want things to happen, you should You should try
Speaker 1: to make it happen, so you can say you have
Speaker 1: that you tried at the very least, even if it fails,
Speaker 1: because if everyone writes it off and says it's facebook
Speaker 1: it's broken, then what's the point. We already know that
Speaker 1: it's ready off of we can't do anything, then then
Speaker 1: that will become a self a funning prophecy. And no
Speaker 1: one will and and no, because no one was up
Speaker 1: forward to fix it with change it in the first place.
Speaker 1: M hm. And so the question of anything happened, that's
Speaker 1: really up to us. It's it's up to it's up
Speaker 1: to yourself, it's up to me, it's up to the
Speaker 1: people and listening and on them. My am my working myself. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes I am, but that doesn't mean I can do
Speaker 1: it to known. I'm not a superhero. Sophie is amazing,
Speaker 1: but she's right. She's not a superhero and she shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to be. She can't take on a massive, powerful,
Speaker 1: global institution like Facebook all on our own. So the
Speaker 1: question is what will we do? How will we honor
Speaker 1: women like Sophie who have risked everything to speak truth
Speaker 1: to power. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
Speaker 1: or just want to say hi? You can be just
Speaker 1: at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridgetad.
Speaker 1: It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer, Terry harry It as
Speaker 1: our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget DoD. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
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Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts