Brian Merchant: Social media promised us democracy — but gave us dictatorships

Frances Haugen, better known as the Facebook whistleblower, tells a story about her former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, that helps explain why Facebook — and Twitter and Reddit, for that matter — feels like such a toxic waste dump these days.

In 2020, members of Narendra Modi's ruling party in India had published Facebook posts calling Muslims rodents and traitors, and saying they should be shot. Given that this was clearly hate speech, and that such propaganda is, historically, an indicator of imminent ethnic violence, employees inside the tech giant felt certain they had to act.

"Thirty-plus people across the company," Haugen recalls in her new book, "The Power of One," convened to determine the "conditions under which Facebook should step in and take down speech from political actors." The team crafted a proposal that "provided detailed criteria for what counted as speech risking communal violence" — and when Facebook should take such posts down.

There was a sticking point, however: If Facebook removed Indian politicians' posts on grounds of ethnic hatred, the