Ex-members of Facebook's integrity team speak of demoralization as management ignored their work; at least 10 members now work in a similar division at Twitter
because if you're underpaid it's that much harder to store up the financial power to speak. https://twitter.com/... David Sacks / @davidsacks : Did anyone else notice that the Facebook whistleblower basically proposed that she should be installed as Zuckerberg's boss? Got to admire the chutzpah. https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Dwoskin / @lizzadwoskin : NEW: Before Frances Haugen, these Facebook workers raised alarms in the same Integrity unit dedicated to mitigating the company's harms. The walls they hit - over and over - speak volumes about whether the company can police itself. W/@craigtimberg https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Joanne Mcneil / @jomc : Facebook culture and mission haven't changed: it's always been an evil clown show but now it's an evil clown show trillion dollar company. Joanne Mcneil / @jomc : Zuckerberg at once wants you to believe that the FB company culture isn't what it used to be (a frat party) and that the FB mission has always been pure but they've made a few missteps in recent years. Joanne Mcneil / @jomc : remember when Facebook ordered all the women in the office to wear a t-shirt with Mark's face on it for his birthday. Issie Lapowsky / @issielapowsky : NEW: Former Facebook employees say the company's unapologetic approach to Frances Haugen and her testimony is backfiring. “I thought the statement they put out about Frances Haugen was beyond the pale.” - @wexler https://www.protocol.com/... Shannon Bond / @shannonpareil : “We didn't join Facebook because we were big fans of the company. We joined because — rather than shouting about how something sucks you think you can make it better. But over time, you realize that the leadership is either indifferent or ignorant.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... @amy_siskind : NEW: Facebook refused to identify the Proud Boys as a hate organization “out of concern that the Proud Boys had backing in the Republican Party.” - a data scientist tells @lizzadwoskin Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : Yet another example of how Facebook's comms strategy is so braindead. It's like it was cooked up in a lab to perfectly be the opposite of what good comms should be. https://twitter.com/... @kvox : Here's a fascinating bit: “At least 10 members of the integrity division where Haugen worked now work in a similar division at Twitter.” https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Dwoskin / @lizzadwoskin : @Amy_Siskind And here is the link for those interested! https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Jamison Foser / @jamisonfoser : “The Republicans on the [Facebook] public policy team, they made every single decision to avoid upsetting Trump.” (My $0.02 is this is generous: The Facebook Republicans aren't merely afraid of Trump's ire; they are in on it.) https://twitter.com/... Jamison Foser / @jamisonfoser : Facebook “executives resisted researchers' calls to identify the Proud Boys as a hate organization ... out of concern that the Proud Boys had backing in the Republican Party.” https://twitter.com/... Bobby Allyn / @bobbyallyn : “They were just zero percent interested in stuff that I brought them,” this former employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It was raised all the way up ... and was consistently stopped.” https://twitter.com/... @amy_siskind : Other Facebook employees from the integrity unit have also raised alarm bells. We can't trust @Facebook to fix what's broken - regulations are needed! https://twitter.com/... Cybersecurity For Democracy / @cyber4democracy : From another former integrity employee: “We joined [Facebook] because — rather than shouting about how something sucks you think you can make it better. But over time, you realize that the leadership is either indifferent or ignorant.” https://docs.google.com/... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : 👀 “At least 10 members of the integrity division where Haugen worked now work in a similar division at Twitter.” https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Washington Post report lands mid-whistleblower cycle: Frances Haugen has already alleged internally raised alarms went unheeded, and this piece names the unit where those alarms originated — the Integrity team built to mitigate the company's harms. Its ex-members describe hitting management resistance over and over, which is why Dwoskin frames the story as evidence on whether Facebook can police itself.
The demoralization is not new. Back in December 2018, chat logs already showed internal tensions at a "boiling point" with staff hoping for a leadership change — a "Sundar or Dara moment". Discontent resurfaced in June 2021 over takedown decisions in India and Israel, so the integrity team's exodus reads as the latest stage of a three-year attrition pattern, not a sudden rupture.
First-order effects
- At least 10 former members of Facebook's integrity division now work in a similar division at Twitter — an immediate transfer of harm-mitigation expertise from one rival platform to another.
Second-order effects
- Twitter gains seasoned trust-and-safety operators without building them from scratch, sharpening the two platforms' competition over content-moderation credibility just as Facebook's is under public attack.
Third-order effects
- If internal warnings keep being overridden, the credible alternative becomes external: regulators and researchers replacing internal teams as the primary check on platform harms — the core question Haugen's testimony forced onto the agenda.
The trend: Platform trust-and-safety capacity is migrating out of the companies that ignore it — toward rivals like Twitter and toward outside oversight — eroding the case for pure self-regulation.