How whistleblower Frances Haugen left Mark Zuckerberg speechless
The woman behind Facebook’s most damning-ever leak of internal documents has a name: Frances Haugen.
On Monday (US time), ahead of Facebook’s worst site-wide outage for some time, details about Haugen emerged. She was a product manager on the company’s “civic integrity team,” where she systematically copied tens of thousands of internal documents to share with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, members of Congress and the Wall Street Journal before leaving in May. It could turn out to be the most important act in Facebook’s corporate history.
This was no rash act of impulsiveness. Haugen, 37, armed herself with lawyers and provided reams of documents for a WSJ series about Facebook’s harms. Giving her first television interview on Sunday (US time), she was succinct in explaining why Facebook’s algorithms were harmful. In another interview, with The Journal podcast, posted Monday, she gave clear prescriptions for what could be done: Don’t break up Facebook, but do hire more people to audit and guide the content that the company shows to more than 1.6 billion people every day.
Haugen no doubt has a tsunami of legal and corporate blowback headed her way. But Facebook is going to struggle to discredit someone who not only speaks well, but has a Harvard MBA and is so well-versed in how algorithms are made that she has patents under her name.
Haugen’s document dump revealed what many suspected but couldn’t prove: that Facebook created more lenient secret rules for elite users, that Instagram made body issues worse for one in three teen girls, and that Facebook knowingly amped up outrage on its main site through an algorithm change in 2018, potentially leading to the January 6 storming of the US Capitol building.
Regulators have been at a loss for how to deal with Facebook up to now, but Haugen’s cool-headed suggestions coupled with internal details on how Facebook’s systems are set up could provide a clearer way forward. She stresses that breaking up Facebook would be a mistake because that would starve the individual parts of the conglomerate of the resources needed to stem harmful content. Instead, the company needs far more people to audit and guide content across the platform.
While Facebook claims it’s putting real resources into just that policing, her account suggests the opposite. Her civic integrity unit, with 200 people, was woefully under-resourced and eventually dissolved by Facebook management, she says.
Haugen’s assertions that algorithms are underperforming is a well-rehearsed argument (including here), but she has an enormous cache of documentation to back it up. And these aren’t just Facebook’s problems, she notes, but problems with “engagement-based ranking” in general.
Her biggest wish, she says, is for real transparency. Imagine if Facebook published daily data feeds on its most viral content, she says. “You’d have YouTubers analysing this data and explaining it to people.” That point should add fuel to upcoming regulations like European Union’s AI law, designed to force companies to unpick the code underpinning their AI algorithms for regulators.
While the 2018 revelations about Cambridge Analytica resulted in a fine, regulators ultimately left the social media giant alone and its shares climbed steadily. This is likely to be different, not least because of the change in the White House and Congress since then. US lawmakers recently introduced five anti-trust bills targeting the outsized power of Big Tech. In addition to her trove of documents, Haugen offers lawmakers and regulators deep insider knowledge.
With Haugen speaking publicly, it is the silence from Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg that rings loudest. They have left it to Clegg to try to explain Facebook’s side of things. That is all the more alarming for investors considering that Haugen has gone to the SEC with the claim that Facebook effectively lied to shareholders about the impact of its algorithms.
She describes herself as an algorithm-ranking specialist who, having worked at four social networks — including Alphabet’s Google and Pinterest — understands the intricacies of how computer code chooses what content people see. Her whistleblowing is more powerful both for her own background and the sober approach she took. Going first to a paper that takes an even-handed approach in its corporate reporting insulates her from charges that she’s on an ideological mission.
At Facebook, Haugen says she attended regular meetings where staff would share their struggles to stop viral posts that showed beheadings, or posts that compared certain ethic groups to insects. She ultimately concluded that underinvestment in safety was baked in at Facebook and virtually impossible to change.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of communications and public policy, recently warned staff in an internal memo that they were “going to get questions from friends and family about these things.” That may be a British understatement.
What set Haugen apart was how she acted on that tension, says Carissa Veliz, author of Privacy is Power, a book about the surveillance economy which talks about whistleblowers as the moral canary in the coalmine for Big Tech. Veliz says that when whistleblowers realise they can’t fix wrongdoing at a company, the cognitive dissonance they experience is so violent that it’s unsustainable.
“Most people try to explain it away,” Veliz says. “But a whistleblower will decide that they just can’t go on like that. They will decide to make a huge sacrifice and come out with this information.”
The next step is surely terrifying. Whistleblowers often deal not only with recriminations from their employer, but threatening letters from lawyers. (What shouldn’t be lost in any future success for Haugen are the many whistleblowers who’ve been silenced by such threats.)
During the pandemic, Haugen left the Bay Area to go live with her parents. Her mother, who is also an Episcopal priest, told Haugen she should go public with her concerns if she believed that lives were on the line.
Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram suffer six-hour global outage
With Haugen speaking publicly, it is the silence from Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg that rings loudest. They have left it to Clegg to try to explain Facebook’s side of things. That is all the more alarming for investors considering that Haugen has gone to the SEC with the claim that Facebook effectively lied to shareholders about the impact of its algorithms.
Zuckerberg appears to have his head in the sand. In recent weeks he has bizarrely published a series of lighthearted or jokey posts on his Facebook page about fencing, surfing and helping his children raise money for charity.
He may yet try to explain away the revelations. But, as Veliz says, his employees will increasingly struggle with the notion that they are working for a company that is toxic. More may be inclined to come forward as whistleblowers. That won’t be pretty.
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Far left Democrat introduces forced birth control legislation China would be proud of
If you think the creepy, science-fiction-like boasts of depopulation theories are reserved for computer software magnets like Bill Gates, think again. There are elected officials who think we need legislation to curb the number of children Americans can have.
A Pennsylvania Democrat has proposed legislation that would sterilize Pennsylvania women after the birth of their third child. I wonder where all the crazed Planned Parenthood, our body – our choice radicals are on this eye-popping piece of proposed legislation.
Oh, that’s right. Pennsylvania Democrat Christopher Rabb’s legislation goes after the male species. He insists it’s a necessary and noble public ambition to snip every male father after he’s conceived his third child.
Or, force all men to get a vasectomy on or before their 40th birthday. We are not kidding about this proposal. Rabb recently sent out a memorandum to all PA House members outlining his insane attempt to curb population growth.
Rabb also wants to pay a bounty-like reward to anyone who narks out a man who refuses to get snipped. The madness of this legislation doesn’t stop there. The radical leftist also insists that anyone who doesn’t prevent unwanted pregnancy during intercourse violates the law.
This Philadelphia legislator is added proof the radical progressive left agenda is akin to a runaway train barreling off the tracks. These radicals want to erase God from American culture and push America over the cliff into communism.
They kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party, not the American people they are elected to serve. Radical progressive Democrats want control of every aspect of people’s lives. Americans must vote these crazies out of office. We must save our nation before it’s too late.
Thankfully, some of Rabb’s colleagues find the idea behind the bill preposterous. They maintain the bill is cemented proof of the left’s aggressive assault on American medical freedom. Christopher Rabb’s sterilization legislation is more than that. The bill is an assault on sanity.
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Christian Flight Attendant: My Character Was Attacked, Job Taken Away for Questioning Woke Policy
A former Alaska Airlines flight attendant is fighting back after being fired for wanted to have a dialogue over the company’s support the pro-LGBT Equality Act.
Lacey Smith responded to a notice on an internal company message board in which the company expressed its support for the bill, according to First Liberty Institute, which is representing Smith.
“As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” she wrote, according to First Liberty’s website.
“I was shocked that the airline I loved working for fired me for asking a question about something the airline asked us to support,” Smith said, according to Newsweek.
“I thought my question would receive the same level of respect that I give to others. It’s frightening to think that Americans can lose their jobs for simply asking questions about important issues,” she said.
According to Newsweek, the bill, also known as H.R. 5, “prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment housing, credit and the jury system. It more specifically defines and includes sex, sexual orientation and gender identity among prohibited categories of discrimination and segregation.”
It passed in the Democratic-controlled House in February by a vote of 224-206. Its fate in the Senate has yet to be determined.
In August, First Liberty filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Smith and another fired flight attendant, whose name was not released, according to Fox Business.
It announced the lawsuit in a Sept. 10 news release headlined “First Liberty Defends Christian Flight Attendant Fired for Questioning the Equality Act.”
In her EEO complaint, Smith said she was asking out of concern for how religious beliefs are treated in the workplace.
The airline, however, said her question was offensive and discriminatory by suggesting that gender orientation was a moral issue.
First Liberty noted that the issue is bigger than one employer.
“Lacey’s termination demonstrates the heavy hand woke corporate America wields over religious employees, as well as the devastating repercussions that can follow. The consequences for those who dare to violate the ‘acceptable’ speech codes set up by the corporate elite are extreme,” it wrote.
“This brave patriot has resolved to be the one to stand by her God-given rights to believe as her conscious and faith dictate, not the official ‘woke’ narrative from a corporation,” First Liberty wrote.
The second flight attendant, a woman who was otherwise unidentified in the complaint, went even further in her criticisms than Smith’s question. She said that the proposed law would end up endangering girls and women in places designed to ensure their safety.
“Does Alaska support: endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom, obliterating women rights and parental rights? This act will force every American to agree with controversial government-imposed ideology or be treated as an outlaw,” the flight attendant wrote, according to the EOE complaint.
“The Equality act [Act] would affect everything from girls’ and women’s showers and locker rooms to women’s shelters and women’s prisons, endangering safety and diminishing privacy. Giving people blanket permission to enter private spaces for the opposite sex enables sexual predators to exploit the rules and gain easy access to victims. This is the Equality Act.”
She was immediately banned from the workplace and eventually fired, the complaint said.
“The corporate ‘canceling’ of our clients by Alaska Airlines makes a mockery of laws that protect religious Americans from employment discrimination,” David Hacker, director of litigation for First Liberty Institute, said Sept. 8, according to Fox Business.
“It is a blatant violation of state and federal civil rights laws to discriminate against someone in the workplace because of their religious beliefs and expression. Every American should be frightened if an employer can fire them for simply asking questions based on their religious beliefs about culturally important issues,” he said.
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Salvation Army Imposes Racial Wokeness Within Church’s Ranks
The news is replete with examples of corporations and institutions going woke, from Google to Aunt Jemima. Unfortunately, now The Salvation Army is in danger of joining the ranks of Woke Inc.
In materials prepared for its more than 1.5 million members, The Salvation Army uses terms that echo both radical “anti-racism” jargon and the divisive teachings of critical race theory, which divides people into two camps: the oppressors and the oppressed.
And many of this trusted charitable organization’s donors and other supporters aren’t even aware of the change.
Despite being apolitical historically, The Salvation Army has begun to promote political and racial ideologies under the banner of its New York-based International Social Justice Commission since the protests and riots over George Floyd’s death in police custody began over a year ago.
The International Social Justice Commission works on issues involving human rights and justice, from human traffickers to asylum-seekers. But more recently, the commission, launched in 2007, is unhealthily mixing admirable human rights work with politically charged advocacy based in progressive politics.
As many Americans know, The Salvation Army, founded in London in 1865, is a church organized in an “army” structure encompassing “officers,” “soldiers,” and other volunteers. Collectively called Salvationists, they serve the organization and are inspired to perform good deeds on account of their Christian faith.
Early this year, Brian Peddle, general and international leader of The Salvation Army, announced an initiative called “Let’s Talk About Racism,” a curriculum with devotionals, videos, and other materials dedicated to helping Salvationists conduct “courageous conversations about racism.”
Peddle, who is Canadian, says in the video announcement Feb. 9 that the resource would help Salvationists “overcome the damage racism has inflicted upon the world, and yes, The Salvation Army.”
The brief video, however, makes no attempt to back up or explain the bold accusation that racism has damaged The Salvation Army at any significant level.
The Salvation Army has a long, storied history of meeting spiritual and physical needs around the world. Many Americans may interact with the church only around Christmastime, when its volunteers ring bells in front of grocery stores to attract cash contributions in red kettles. The organization also runs hundreds of thrift stores and shelters in over 100 countries.
Salvationists throughout the world attend church services on Sundays as part of their local chapter, and some shepherd these congregations. The first goal listed on the website of The Salvation Army International is “advancement of the Christian religion.”
Having met many Salvationists personally, I can attest to the depth of their faith and commitment to evangelism. In many ways, The Salvation Army is a prime example of what it looks like for the Christian church to be devout in both faith and deed.
But today, the Christian witness of this esteemed institution is under threat from within.
The “Let’s Talk About Racism” initiative, officially rolled out July 7, is described in five slides that outline the larger Christian church’s alleged complicity in racism and provide action plans to combat racism through what the initiative calls an “anti-racist” lens. (The resource page provides translations in Spanish and Portuguese.)
One Salvation Army captain told me that the leadership of the organization disseminated this curriculum via emails, videos, and other presentations through its four territorial commanders and down the hierarchy to field officers who serve poor communities across the United States.
In some aspects, the materials are indistinguishable from the “anti-racist” programs of any multinational corporation, or the expounding of critical race theory at a major university.
“Let’s Talk About Racism” accuses white Salvationists of being unable or unwilling to acknowledge their racism, just as Robin DiAngelo argues in her book “White Fragility” that whites are defensive about racism or race-related issues in general.
The Salvation Army initiative attacks “colorblindness” on race with the same argument used by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the book “How to Be an Antiracist,” which is to characterize it as a false neutrality that reveals a person’s inner racism.
Defining ‘Whiteness’
The initiative also includes definitions of institutional racism, systemic racism, and “Whiteness” that identify real or perceived differences in life outcomes (“inequities”) as attributable not to individual effort and other circumstances, but to discrimination.
As such, the materials starkly resemble the radical “anti-racist” programs such as Coca-Cola’s “Be Less White” program, or The Smithsonian Institution’s own “anti-racism” materials.
The Salvation Army’s materials include sections on police brutality, health care, and black unemployment that assign blame to “racism” and “racial inequity.” This race-based lens informs the curriculum’s explanation of related statistics, stating that disparities are evidence of deep-rooted structural racism while betraying Salvationists’ historical commitment to staying out of partisan politics.
One study question asks: “How would The Salvation Army at the corporate level be strengthened by taking an active stance for racial equity and unity?”
This question implies that the church so far has been passively complicit. And notice that it uses the word “equity” instead of “equality.”
The biggest attack on Salvationists, however, is an admonition that they “repent” and offer “a sincere apology” for racism. In Section Four—called “Describe and Plan: How Then Shall We Live?”—the authors tell members that “the need to receive a sincere apology is necessary.”
“Please take time to write out or think about how you can repent and apologize,” they write.
Another study questions ask: “Who are those who deserve an apology/those who need to give an apology?”
This lesson never outright says it, but everything else in the document suggests that non-black Salvationists need to apologize to blacks. The same section cites the “many things the Black community in America continues to grieve about and experience,” from “police brutality” to “discrimination in health care,” to “mass incarceration.”
The document’s authors cite zero primary evidence of any systemic failure on The Salvation Army’s part on the subject of race and racism. As the basis for this damning claim, they only quote one retired officer recalling that a fellow Salvation Army cadet “had a doll hanging in his room that he called by my name.”
Today’s so-called anti-racists like to gain power by goading and guilting white people into admitting shame for crimes they did not commit. Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of The New York Times’ debunked 1619 Project, calls slavery America’s “original sin,” implying the need to repent. Some in the Black Lives Matter movement also have goaded whites into kneeling and asking for forgiveness from the black community for racism.
Self-styled anti-racists have seen some success with other Christian organizations by demanding “apologies” for racism. Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy recently asked his employees to “have an apologetic heart” on racism.
The Salvation Army is at risk of caving to the same grandstanding.
Yet in practice, The Salvation Army confronted racism aggressively long before the rest of America, and the church should be proud of it. In 1898, at least five decades before the U.S. civil rights movement, the organization’s Orders of Regulations for Social Officers stated clearly that “none shall be debarred from any of its benefits … because they are of any particular nationality, race or color.”
The Salvation Army has been a leader in appointing black Americans to national leadership positions. Among them was Israel Gaither, a former national commander who I suppose must have misspoken when he said that “the future is absolutely wide open to African-American Salvationists who would be available for God’s use as officer.”
The organization was a trailblazer on racial equality. Yet these documents, directed at members, at best misrepresent The Salvation Army as weak on confronting issues of race throughout its history. This misrepresentation only will inflame tensions, rather than offer hope for racial healing.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/03/salvation-army-imposes-racial-wokeness-within-churchs-ranks
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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