“I don’t throw birthday parties because I don’t like being the centre of attention.” “We have intentionally not been doing many interviews, because it is not about me, it’s about the documents,” she says.
MYLIFE PRIVACY PRO EVUNE PROFESSIONAL
It’s the kind of conversation you’d expect to have with a successful Silicon Valley professional working at one of the world’s biggest tech companies, which Haugen was until five months ago. Haugen’s expansive and upbeat answers, sometimes punctuated with laughter, contrast with the measured performance she gave to US senators on Capitol Hill on 5 October in which she memorably accused the company of putting “ astronomical profits before people”. Speaking to the Observer over a video link, Haugen displays none of the stress you’d expect from taking on a near-$1tn (£730bn) company with its ranks of lawyers and advisers. If I hadn’t brought those documents forward that was never going to come to light.” “I did what I thought was necessary to save the lives of people, especially in the global south, who I think are being endangered by Facebook’s prioritisation of profits over people. Her concerns over an apparent lack of safety controls in non-English language markets, such as Africa and the Middle East, where the Facebook platform was being used by human traffickers and armed groups in Ethiopia, were a key factor in her decision to act. “I lived with her for six months last year and I had such profound distress because I was seeing these things inside of Facebook and I was certain it was not going to be fixed inside of Facebook.” “I am really lucky that my mother is an episcopal priest,” says Haugen, who was born and raised in Iowa. Haugen, 37, says the turning point came when she moved in with her mother, who had given up an academic career to become a priest. Meanwhile, Facebook spirals deeper into crisis. On Monday, Haugen will take her damning views of the company to Westminster when she testifies before MPs and peers. The documents have triggered a maelstrom of allegations, including that Facebook knew its products were damaging teenagers’ mental health, were fomenting ethnic violence in countries such as Ethiopia and were failing to curb misinformation before the 6 January Washington riots. In May this year she left her position as a product manager at the social media giant and took tens of thousands of internal documents with her.
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