| There was something familiar about the recent bombshell revelations about Facebook. Before Frances Haugen became a Facebook whistleblower who released troves of documents revealing toxic problems ignored by the tech giant, she was a product manager tasked with solving them. Her job: Figuring out how to tweak Facebook's algorithm so it wouldn't amplify misinformation and fall victim to exploitation by foreign adversaries. Haugen and her team had all sorts of recommendations, but the problem, according to Haugen, was that the company's management didn't listen or take seriously their concerns. The last straw for Haugen came after the company dissolved a group she worked in called "Civic Integrity" which tackled risks to elections and misinformation. "It was the moment where I was like, 'I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,'" she said in an interview this week on 60 Minutes. Her experience had echoes of two recent incidents at tech companies, one at Google and the other Pinterest. The formula goes something like this: A team is hired to address a problem, one that often has to do with inequality. Said group does their job. The company at hand doesn't want to listen to suggestions.
That's generally what Timnit Gebru, Google's former AI ethics chief, said happened to her when she submitted a paper the company said saw as critical of its own artificial intelligence technology. "Stop writing your documents because it doesn't make a difference," Gebru wrote in an email that she says ultimately got her fired. "There is no way more documents or more conversations will achieve anything." When Ifeoma Ozoma, who worked on Pinterest's public policy and social impact team, suggested the social network stop promoting former slave plantations as wedding venues, her manager chastised her in a performance review. She ultimately left and started a website that helps other tech whistleblowers tell their stories. Many current and former chief diversity officers say they face the same issues, too. From a practical standpoint, why employ people to make your products and company more equitable just to ignore their recommendations? Like Facebook's Haugen Congressional testimony this week, the former Google scientist Gebru blamed it on a flawed incentive structure. "If the goal is to make maximum money for Google or Amazon, no matter what we do it's going to be just a Band-Aid," she said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last month. That's because tech companies fear that making the internet a better place to be could ultimately hurt their bottom lines. It's unrealistic to think a public company's won't be motivated by profits and driving up shareholder value. But that's precisely the point. Not addressing these problems before they end up splashed across the Internet and in front of Congress seems like a pretty bad business decision. Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has lost billions since Haugen's revelations. Zuckerberg addressed Haugen's claims on Tuesday by denying his company prioritizes profits over user safety. Even if that's true, Zuckerberg can't deny the fact he failed to listen to the people Facebook hired to stop this disaster from happening in the first place. —Shelly Banjo | 
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