The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook

Former Facebook product manager Haugen’s damning debut recaps the explosive allegations she made in 2021—backed by thousands of company documents she leaked to the press—about the social media platform’s malign effects on users and refusal to police dangerous content. According to Haugen, Facebook’s own studies showed that its Instagram app makes young girls feel unhappy and addicted to the platform, and when Myanmar’s military created thousands of Facebook accounts to spread inflammatory propaganda that fueled violence against the country’s Rohingya minority, the company only had a single Burmese-speaking employee to flag problematic content. Haugen also alleges that Facebook knew its algorithms presented users with increasingly extreme content in an effort to boost interactions with the site, so that, for instance, a user who seeks out recipes might start to see anorexia content in their feed. There’s a surfeit of meandering autobiography that revisits such tangential topics as Haugen’s high school debate team and lifelong “stomach problems,” but her diagnosis of Facebook’s ills is revelatory. This is a must-read for anyone interested in big tech and its social impact. (June)