The Daily Beast Podcast - How WSJ Reporter Jeff Horwitz Got the Facebook Whistleblower to Talk

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, who published what’s now known as the Facebook Files, thanks to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, tells Molly how he was able to get her to share those documents with him—and what he thinks Facebook’s next move is.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the new abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have a special guest with Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horowitz, who of course broke open the Facebook papers with whistleblower Francis Hogan. And we're going to talk to him all about the implications of the Facebook papers today. Welcome to the new abnormal, Jeff. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to have you here because you are the whistleblower whisperer. Okay, that's a good business card. Can you tell us the story of how it happened or now?

A bit. I'm able to say that I started talking to Francis in December. I'd reached out to her in November, like right after the election, basically saying, Hey, like, Facebook did all this crazy stuff in preparation of 2020, and they're about to roll back a lot of it. Are any of those pieces, things that you think should be kept around? It was like a pretty good question in terms of the, you know. And I sent that to like 40 people.

She responded. And then, you know, I think she really wanted to know what we were all about and why we were interested. Because I think she thought that there were ways that these stories could be told that would be distinctly unhelpful and ways that would be helpful. And so, like, she just kind of wanted to quiz on that stuff. And, I mean, I should say here, we didn't know what the stories were going to be. Like, it was very apparent the first time I met her that she was, you know, she spent a couple years of the company. She was very knowledgeable about ranking systems. She had experience in tech before this.

And is just also an extremely smart person who's got some pretty strong analytical capabilities. But it wasn't clear. It wasn't like, hey, Jeff, like, I'm about to raid the vault. Who wants some, right? We're talking about Frances Hogan, just to make sure that everybody knows who we're talking about here. Because she is the most famous whistleblower in the world, at least right now. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's some Pentagon papers and things.

Don't let it go to anyone's head, all right? I mean, this may actually end up being a bigger deal than the Pentagon pay first, but continue. Oh, we'll see. Yeah, look, I think what impact is on this stuff is still TBD in a lot of ways. Maybe we should get to that in a bit. But she had already seen that Facebook was just egregiously failing to invest, in particular in the safeties overseas users. I think global South stuff, I mean, yes, she's a white girl from Iowa.

I'm a white dude from Northern California. but like it's hard not to feel like that's pressing, right? As much as there might be questions about polarization, et cetera. I mean, she'd seen the work we'd done on India. And I think, you know, everybody was pretty behind the idea that just some of what was happening. It's not just that regulating the internet is hard and regulating social media is hard. It was just that Facebook seemed to be okay with doing a really poor job in some areas. Yeah, I think ultimately what becomes so clear when you read your reporting and when you hear her testify,

and certainly with the different now, with the, you know, the leaks, the papers leaked, which she did. So you started meeting with her and you thought like, holy moly, this is a big deal. Yeah, I started meeting with her and just, I mean, again, there was no sense that,

you know, sort of massive document offload was on the horizon. I mean, there was a sense that, like, I came away being like, wow, this woman's pretty fearless, actually. And she is a talking game in which she is not going to be a friend. of getting caught in the end. She seems to be okay with the idea that this is her job, this is her mission.

You know, I think so we spent, I would say three or four months just chatting from time to time. Like sometimes once or twice a week, you know, usually in person, COVID time outdoors. After all was said and done,

you know, like there were definitely points when she just went dark on me for a few weeks. And I was like, oh, well, hell, that, you know,

it was a great source. I got a lot out of her. I'm, you know, sorry that she, she, I lost her somewhere. I found out after the fact that just she was really struggling with consciously kind of being a mole

inside Facebook, that she was very confident that she was doing the right thing and that this was information that just absolutely needed to get out of the company. But it still sucks. She was kind of unable to be honest with the people she was around about exactly what she was doing. And she's colleagues and she liked those colleagues. And it's just not a fun situation. I think there was a lot of dissonance there and that was hard for her.

I mean, I can't even imagine the level of anxiety I would have just thinking about this relationship. I mean, how involved were you with the way she rolled out the information? Obviously, you know, we were talking, we consulted on stuff through the spring and I had some awareness that she was doing these things and we were talking a bit about subject matters. The idea was initially she wanted to remain confidential entirely, right? And I mean, I know she's been out a lot, but like you will recall when the, you know, for basically the first month that we were writing on this stuff, there was no peep of a whistleblower, just documents. And I think she initially the goal was to keep her confidential from everyone but Facebook. It was kind of understood that Facebook would know just because they log activities. obviously after she got, you know, she got a lawyer, she got some PR advice.

I think there was kind of, she became persuaded that it was a good thing for her to be shepherding this work publicly and that it would be, you know, for the best for the sort of message. And I think kind of decided that there was a place for her in advocacy. So, yeah, I don't know this is a super amount of fun, but. Yeah, I don't think he's having a great time. Then again, I don't think collecting the documents was either. Right. Oh, no.

I am aware of the effort she put in. here and they were at points pretty brutal. You know, she was simultaneously holding down a job and like trying to basically make the most of her waiting days at the company. She decided to make that a go. And obviously it's a, you know, she transitioned to kind of an advocacy role. It's a, with the kind of the Facebook files that have been rebranded, the Facebook papers by the consortium. Like it's a little weird for me. You know, it's just like, hey, wait a second. That's my whistleblower. Yeah, yeah, except here's the thing. She's not mine. She's hers. Like, we have. had, she gave us access to these documents. She trusted us to tell the stories right, you know,

at least to the best of my knowledge, she's pleased with what we did do. And, you know, at a certain point, though, in the advocacy world, like, kind of, I got to let her go. I mean, she was not mine. She is not mine. She's, like, the best source I've ever had, but that's not making her mind. So we're seeing reports, you know, Facebook's going to do this rebrand. It seems like this is, them seeing this coming into is a lot of it, but do you think that there's going to be any internal change or as Facebook's culture? I mean, these papers are really damning about how not mentally equipped these people are for how big a job they have. Yeah, it's kind of impressive because actually 50,000 people could have done what Francis did. That's a really interesting point. And none of them did.

And I mean, even now, even after this stuff is out there, you've got Facebook literally telling employees internally, this stuff's all cherry picked. And it's kind of like, guys, like, you realize those employees can either go directly go view the documents that are cited or they can go look to where those documents were and see they're no longer available, which should tell you something, right? In terms of internally, it's been a great time for sourcing. Very exciting. And I think that there are some folks who are really kind of wondering what the way forward is. There are also some folks who are out there defending the company and saying everything is good as it should be. But one of the things that I think I'm really heartened by.

And this is something that we sort of focused on, tried to sort of make clear in the Facebook files series, starting in September, was that this work really only dates three beers back. Like, trying to understand what the hell Facebook's impact on society truly is in a broad sense. It's like, that didn't really happen until after the 2016 election.

And they were, up till then, they were just, like, happily optimizing for engagement with, like, not really any thought to what the fallout was going to be any of these things. And I think the first round of people who sort of pioneered these methods, they did their time at Facebook. They frequently wandered off, you know, in a bit of a huff that

they hadn't been able to do the job that Facebook hired them to do because Facebook wouldn't let them. And like, they're now outside the company talking about these general issues. Like, I'm thinking, like, Samin Jack Labarty or Katie Harbath or, like, the Integrity Institute guys, There's a whole bunch of, and gals, there's a whole bunch of people who are sort of really knowledgeable what they're doing. Of course, like Francis and Sophie Zhang, and, you know, I'm not saying that anyone has, like, a monopoly on solutions or suggestions, like, please know. You know, like, I think that most important thing Francis did by far was just, like, make this stuff available for people to look at themselves or for other people to read about. And there will be a chance to more review of the actual direct documents. So my hope is that the first thing that happens is just like some level of comprehension of what's actually happening inside the company and the stakes, followed by maybe a focus on, okay, how could we get more and better and more consistently reliable data out of the company that doesn't involve like Francis Hogan going cloak and dagger on it?

Because that seems, one, not replicable because we do understand and we've written that. that Facebook is shutting down much of the access. And we kind of knew that was going to happen. Like when Francis and I were talking about stuff, like when she was kind of pulling this stuff together, you know, we both understood that if she succeeded in doing what she was planning on doing,

that no one else would ever be able to walk through that door again. It's interesting to me that, you know, we're seeing a Zuckerberg apology tour. Are they really saying they're sorry about much? No, I don't think that's true. I think it's really that they're trying to put a new name and say, no, we're going to change with... Well, there are...

No, but first they said, you know, this wasn't supposed to... You know, they kind of always do a cycle of like, I'm sorry, maybe not quite the full court press they did in 2018, but, I mean, ultimately, you know, the idea is that if they just sort of, you know, keep going, that they'll never be held accountable. Yeah, I think keep pushing, but I think that at this point, I think in 2018 there was kind of this like, oh gosh, you know,

like we're going to really... go back to square one and rethink things. And I haven't heard that. I feel like they were lying. Yeah, I haven't heard that out of here. Like I've, you know, like we were, you know, accused of chiro picking things and kind of just the entire body. I mean, like, and keep in mind that the company actually has been pretty good about liaising with us and, you know, responding to things and even putting on executives in some instances. Right. But the executives basically attacked the whistleblower. When they're talking to us, they don't bother with that. Right. When they're going in front of Congress, they do. So it's like it's kind of an interesting thing in which like they're not really arguing with

most of the underlying points. They're suggesting perhaps that it's not the full perspective, which like, yeah, it's not. So, you know, that's okay. But it's kind of a yes or what approach. Right. So Facebook doesn't feel like there's anything wrong with radicalizing a percentage of the population and spreading anti-vax misinformation. I mean, they would not agree with that statement. But actions speak louder than words. They seem to be pretty. comfortable with where things are at. I think that's something with just the overall work that we did and some of the stuff you're seeing as well from people reporting other details out of the same documents is that it's just kind of okay. It's considered to be like the status

quo is acceptable. They understand that there are some like really grievous things. But like unless Apple's going to kick them out of the app store, they're not really going to act on human trafficking in a serious fashion. And then once that crisis is passed and they have acted on it and taken down 100,000 pages that are like literally involved in the sale of people. They, uh, kind of just let things go back to where they were. Congratulations, Facebook for taking down the human trafficking. Kind of temporarily though, right? And then it came back. I mean, like my colleague Justin Sheck did some amazing reporting and like actually ended up speaking with a woman who was like trafficked via Facebook into an abusive situation in Saudi. And I think she got back. Like she managed to escape in January or

something like that. You can't really argue with the, the dollars. cents budgeting of these things, right? Like 87% of misinformation spending was happening in the U.S., you know, like even though that's like 10% of their user base. And I mean, like they don't have AI that works in most of all languages they operate in, I believe. I think they've got like AI in 55 and they serve 150 languages and that doesn't seem to be slowing them down.

Right. Oh, it's so depressing. So the anti-back stuff too. I mean, the statistics are like wherever Facebook pops up, they, vaccine rates go down. Yeah, I think the vaccination stuff, I think, was just super fascinating for me. That was like kind of the first week. That was the first story that we closed out because it was just fascinating because Mark Zuckerberg like literally has been donating to and investing in vaccine research for years really believes in it personally. It's like exactly the sort of science-based thing.

Yeah, his wife's a doctor. He hired like he had a, you know, a coronavirus expert working for him. Like everything lined up. And also, of course, everyone's like immensely dependent. on his products during the pandemic. So, like, this was the perfect situation for Facebook. And then they seemed to have a hard time recognizing that the anti-measels vaxers were going to turn into anti-COVID vaxers. Like, and when the anti-COVID-vax efforts, like, truly, truly started getting traction early this year, they were pretty flat-footed about it.

Like, they were using classifiers that had been built. That's, you know, basically AI and. enforcement algorithms that had been built two years prior for other vaccine stuff, and they didn't even have one for comments. And so it was just kind of like, guys, how did this happen? And it really does seem like the company is so invested in thinking about all the good ways that people could use its product that they don't foresee. Nor the human trafficking. And other things, but yeah. A lot of people debate if Facebook really wants oversight and if it really wants government regulation. What do you see there? I think that the we'd like to be regulated thing is an interesting

line. And in some ways, if you really want to be regulated, though, you've got to let people know what your business actually is and what the decisions are and the choices, right? Facebook loves to talk about hard tradeoffs without talking specifically about what they traded off for what. And you know, it's like kind of this transparency thing that doesn't really add up to much. And with regulation pretty clearly, you know, everyone likes to dunk on members of Congress that ask questions poorly, right? But like pretty clearly, if there is a lack of information, that stands from the difficulty that, like, people outside the company are getting. I mean, it's, like, kind of sad that academics have been, like, on Twitter being, like, get us access to

these documents. Like, dear God, these are people with PhDs. Like, they should not be waiting for our leftovers, you know? Like, that's like, like, like, and this is the sad side of affairs is that, like an intern in Facebook's data science operation has the capacity to do far more sophisticated analysis than like literally the most senior research scientists at universities do in terms of this thing. And that's like, that's not, that's not good. And I think we all kind of got, we all kind of got a bit like thrown off track and kind of some of the data privacy stuff back kind of post-C Cambridge Analytica because it was like, oh God, well, there was an academic involved, kind of. And the weird thing is that like on privacy,

like, it's kind of weird that the last place that concerns about privacy are actually being held legitimately is, like, or are being upheld is in among the people who like theoretically could actually help out with platform design. And, you know, like, it's just like, okay, everyone can buy the information. I can buy location information on you guys right now. But God forbid that an academic have direct access to, you know, content from Facebook. Stuff they need. Yeah. Are they unable to control? their evilness or are they doing this on purpose? Notice how nonpartisan that question was. No, they're not evil. Mark Zuckerberg really loves the product and he really loves what he's built and he wants to keep on building things and honestly maintaining things isn't fun. And I think it's kind of pretty hard, not just Francis Hogan, but like so many people, it's become apparent to me in the course of honestly even more since publishing this stuff. So he started publishing this stuff a couple months. But months ago, that Mark seems to just be, like everything kind of trails back to him. It doesn't even mean that he knows everything that's going on.

I think there's like some level of filtration that occurs in the group of people around him. This is according to the Facebook people I'm talking to. I personally do not know this, right? But everything seems to lead back to his approach. And so it's, I don't know that it's like a thing where I think they're being, like trying to be bad or even that they are heartless or in any way. I think it's just that they are really inclined. toward the positive. And I think that they have a really hard time looking at the things they've done and saying, well, maybe, they seem to have bought the idea that actually the company was

created to connect people rather than to be a company and that somehow connecting people is an inherent good under all circumstances. And it's just like, sort of like, it's really fascinating for a company that's so data driven to be so committed to something that literally can't be measured, and which they haven't even tried to measure as best I can tell, which is like Facebook net good. Fascinating. All right. Well, I hope you'll come back. Happily. Because this is totally interesting. Thanks, Jeff. Take care.

On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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