By an award-winning technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative and harmful tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out. Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice. But that shiny veneer began to crack in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. As a succession of scandals and allegations rocked the company, its leadership--and the world--was forced to ask: How had Facebook become so unrecognizably toxic? The company's own employees set to work in pursuit of answers. They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics: Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break its supposedly inviolable rules. Internal research even raised concerns about whether their prouct was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company had fully understood. Disillusioned and dismayed, a band of employees set to work finding solutions. They endured personal trauma and professional setbacks as they isolated the root causes of many of Facebook's problems, and drew up plans to address them. It was more than their bosses wanted: their work was consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled. Frustrated and appalled, they were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer. Broken Code tells the story of these courageous employees as it shares their explosive discoveries. Expanding on "The Facebook Files," his blockbuster, award-winning series for the Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook's failures, but what the company knew, and often disregarded, about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows in riveting detail, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can't be resolved by strapping on a headset.
