The computer engineer Frances Haugena former Facebook employee, returns to the charge against Big Tech and prepares to launch a non-profit organization that is able to train legislators and lawyers to cope with the abuses perpetrated by large digital companies.
Frances Haugen’s past and Big Tech toxicity
Haugen’s story is a tragically common story: Technique of good hopes, she approached Facebook in an attempt to straighten the distortions from the inside. During a testimony released to the US Congress, the professional confessed to having joined the social network in 2019 in response to the political radicalization of a person close to her, ending up playing the role of lead product manager for the Civil Disinformation section. What she saw of her, she convinced her that her employer had no intention of changing course.
In the woman’s mind, the belief soon emerged that Facebook favored its own economic return to the good of society and that the entire scaffolding of its systems was focused on polarize their users exploiting without hesitation the Internet hoaxes and political controversies to obtain ever-increasing profits.
To react to the suffocating situation, Frances Haugen has decided to move against Big Tech by playing the role of “whistleblower”, an informant, leaking some documents disseminated internally to the corporation to the outside world. Leaning on The Wall Street Journal, he blew up the case of The Facebook Files and highlighted a whole series of criticalities of the social world: from the management of fake news to the strategic tolerance of hate speech, passing from the negative impact that Meta has on the psyche of adolescents.
Frances Haugen at Web Summit 2021 in Lisbon, Portugal.
The new project that is about to fail
Following in the footsteps of Timnit Gebru, a former Google researcher who dedicated himself to the fight against Big Tech malpractice, Haugen is also devoting his energies to founding a non-profit organization designed with a view to developing effective weapons for require corporations to be held accountable for their actions. To “make them responsible” towards their most toxic and dangerous managerial elements.
Beyond the Screen – this is the possible name of the company in question – will focus on three different situations: to encourage investors to keep track of the social responsibility shown by the companies they finance, to educate lawyers who intend to fight against the giants of the sector, to provide researchers the tools to discover behind the scenes on how the individual platforms are managed. At the moment, reports Politico, the start-up has raised funds for about 5 million dollars.
In fact, the professional’s plan is that of design a fake social network which, however, is able to emulate the functioning of the typical algorithms of the sector, a trick that should virtually allow students, academics and investigators to understand more deeply what are the dynamics that move the sector of this specific sector of tech entertainment.
The importance of the project and its global reach
On paper, Beyond the Screen wants to start from the international consumption of the United States and the European Union and then tackle the dynamics of the whole world. A bold prospect, but also terribly indispensable. What happens on social media reverberates in everyday life in addition to the screen and the consequences encountered to date have such an immoderate significance as to be literally incalculable.
They range from the extreme political vision to acting as a megaphone for organized riots against institutions, from supporting leaders known for their state killings to spreading the propaganda of parties that praise religious hatred and much more. Thanks to the gigantic economic resources and the strong political influences, these Big Tech often tend to be able to act with impunity, being involved in multi-year trials that are regularly concluded through settlements or with the annulment of sentences for technical reasons. Frances Haugen claims she wants to put an end to these injustices and she hopes her intervention may one day be completely unnecessary.