Days after Meta published its first human rights report, an international coalition of more than 80 organisations is demanding the company respect South African human rights defender and whistleblower Daniel Motaung. In an open letter published today, they demand Meta and Facebook content moderation outsourcing company Sama immediately cease all attempts to silence Daniel Motaung.

Meta’s most high profile whistleblower Frances Haugen is also a signatory.

The letter reads:

Dear Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Gonzalez,

We are writing to you as more than 80 organizations, lawyers and citizens from around the world to demand that you drop all attempts to silence whistleblower Daniel Motaung and to crush his efforts to improve labor conditions for Facebook content moderators in Kenya and around the world.

Daniel is a human rights defender. He has the right to express himself freely under international human rights law and within the Kenyan constitution, as well as the right to seek justice for the abuses he and his colleagues say they experienced at your hands – working as Facebook content moderators for Meta’s Kenyan outsourcing partner Sama. It is on this basis that he is taking your companies to court, alleging that he and his former colleagues are victims of forced labor, human trafficking and union-busting.

But rather than engage with and learn from his story, your companies are aggressively attempting to silence Daniel, as well as Foxglove, the legal NGO supporting him, with a gag order and contempt of court proceedings. Your lawyers have even asked a judge to “crack the whip” against Daniel, a frontline worker who suffers post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the work he did for you and for which he was earning just $2.20 per hour. It appears Meta and Sama would rather shut Daniel up than meaningfully address his allegations.

Daniel and the hundreds of colleagues who he is standing up for are an integral part of Facebook’s global workforce. Their relentless work sifting through the most toxic and harmful content on the platform, including beheadings and child abuse, hour after hour, day upon day, is what keeps the company in business. Their experiences should be taken seriously and they should be encouraged and supported to speak up – not fired from their jobs and gagged.

It should be a source of intense shame for Meta, one of the richest companies on earth, that it has chosen to focus its corporate clout and resources on the latter course of action. Sama, a company that professes to champion dignified work for all but has instead treated its own workers with callous disdain, should equally hang its head. It couldn’t be clearer that both Facebook and Sama view Daniel, and workers like him, as expendable.

Facebook’s treatment of a low-paid, Black whistleblower is all the more shocking when compared to its response to other whistleblowers with more privilege and profile. Frances Haugen, for example, a white former Facebook product manager who won global media attention after leaking thousands of internal company documents, has rightfully been left to speak freely. It appears to us that the company is making a racist calculation that it can safely seek to silence Daniel without causing itself a PR crisis.

Meta and Sama publicly claim to champion freedom of expression, and to support global movements fighting for equality and racial justice. It is impossible to square such statements with your actions in Kenya and with your treatment of content moderation workers globally. The first step to fixing this is to publicly affirm that you will respect Daniel’s right to speak his truth about his experiences working for your companies and to immediately cease your attempts to impose a gag order on Daniel, Foxglove and his legal team.

We also urge both Facebook and Sama to support the unionization of your content moderation workforce as a vital step towards guaranteeing fair conditions and labor rights in this hazardous industry.

Yours sincerely,

Rebecca Dixon, National Employment Law Project
Dr. Cory Doctorow (h.c.), Author and Activist
Patrick Gaspard, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for American Progress
Frances Haugen, Facebook whistleblower
Dr. Ritumbra Manuvie, Lecturer of International Law and Human Rights, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Dr. J. Nathan Matias, Assistant Professor, Cornell University Departments of Communication and Information Science
Roger McNamee, Author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe; early investor in Facebook
Dr. Safiya Noble, Author, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
Erecu Richard, Women, Climate Change & Environmental Rights Defender
Aliganyira Moses Sabiiti, Program Officer, Bunyoro Choice Uganda Masindi
Anya Schiffrin, Director, Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Phumzile van Damme, Ethical Tech Activist and Former South Africa MP
Shoshana Zuboff, author, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power and Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School
Dr. Susie Alegre, Human Rights Lawyer and Author of Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds

Access Now
Accountable Tech
AfricanDefenders (Pan African Human Rights Defenders Network)
Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC)
Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ)
ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa
Avaaz
Campaign for Free Expression (CFE)
Central Organization of Trade Unions, Kenya (COTU-K)
Centre for Peace Studies
Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO)
CFDT Cadres /French Union of White Collars
Color of Change
Corporate Accountability Lab
CoWorker.org
The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Dare to be Grey
Defend Democracy
DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project)
Državljan D / Citizen D
Fair Vote UK
Freedom of Expression Institute
Free Press
Global Action Plan UK
Global Forum for Media Development
Global Witness
Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)
International Federation of Journalists
International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Irish Council of Civil Liberties
Jeevika - Jeeta Vimukti Karnataka, India
Jobs With Justice
Kenya Human Rights Commission
Labour Start
Legal Resources Centre
Lesotho Teachers Trade Union (LTTU)
Lie Detectors
Local Sustainable Communities Organization (LOSCO)
Mazingira Institute (Kenya)
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)
Namibia Media Trust (NMT)
National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Uganda
Nothing2Hide (N2H)
Panoptykon Foundation
People Vs Big Tech
People Forum for Human Rights (People Forum)
Ranking Digital Rights
Real Facebook Oversight Board
Sherpa
Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project [SERAP]
Stichting the London Story
SumofUs
The All Africa Students Union (AASU)
The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ)
The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF)
The Red Vests Movement
The Signals Network
Transparency International EU
Tribeless Youth
UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry
UNI Global Union
Umbrella for Journalists in Kasese (UJK)
Uplift
Uyghur Human Rights Project
WeMove Europe
Women Human Rights Defenders Hub (The Hub)
#ShePersisted
#jesuisla

Further information on Daniel’s case:

Time, 1 July 2022, Facebook Asks Judge to 'Crack the Whip' in Attempt to Silence a Black Whistleblower

Foxglove, 14 February 2022, NEW CASE: Foxglove supports Facebook content moderator sacked for leading workers to form a trade union in Kenya

The post Stop Facebook from Silencing Whistleblower Daniel Motaung appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.

A roundtable panel examines the unique challenges faced -- and impact created -- by women in tech who choose to come forward.

From Sophie Zhang to Frances Haugen, women whistleblowers are redefining how the world views Big Tech policies and products. With online platform priorities continuing to enable rampant abuse, sexism, and racism, their bravery has never been more important. Yet deciding whether or not to come forward is an extremely difficult decision to make -- one made all the more fraught when facing down Big Tech companies with seemingly endless resources. In the United States, whistleblowers are likely to lose their healthcare -- a result that routinely has a disproportionate impact on women who often require more regular use of health services and may also find themselves charged with looking after members of their immediate and extended family. And though women and women of colour make good candidates for whistleblowing because they have direct experience with Big Tech’s harms, they are also far more likely to be attacked if they come forward.

Fortunately, a community of resources and organizations is now growing around these vital stewards of the public interest. The recently published Tech Worker Handbook, which touts “Preparedness is Power,” is one such resource. Co-created by People vs Big Tech coalition member The Signals Network, in partnership with Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma, Lioness, Whistleblowing International Network, and Matt Mitchell of the Ford Foundation, the essential guide empowers tech employees by providing them with the critical knowledge they need when considering making such a momentous decision.

Public solidarity is another essential support piece -- such as when over 90,000 people signed a petition prepared by SumOfUs declaring they stand with Frances Haugen and all Big Tech whistleblowers. Messages of public support from all across the world were delivered to her before she testified before the EU parliament as part of the ongoing Digital Services Act debate.

Continuing this cycle of support, five activist organizations collaborated in November to examine the unique challenges faced -- and impact created -- by women in tech who choose to come forward to expose wrongdoing. Sponsored by SumofUs, UltraViolet, #ShePersisted, the Real Facebook Oversight Board, and The Signals Network, the panel -- Whistleblowing Women: How female tech workers are taking on Big Tech -- discussed what it is like for women in tech to come forward and why it is so important for them to have supporting documents. Host Carole Cadwalladr (British author, investigative journalist, and features writer for the Guardian and Observer) led the conversation with Ifeoma Ozoma (Founder and Principal of Earthseed), Yael Eisenstat (Future of Democracy Fellow, Berggruen Institute, and former Facebook elections integrity lead), Delphine Halgand-Mishra (Executive Director of The Signals Network), and Libby Liu (CEO of Whistleblower Aid, co-founder and former CEO of the Open Technology Fund). Ifeoma and Yael shared their experiences of speaking out, while Delphine and Libby provided background on the critical support their organisations provide to whistleblowers today.

The hour-long discussion, dubbed “a celebration of the bravery of whistleblowers in tech” by the Real Facebook Oversight Board, is a must-watch for anyone interested in understanding the complex process of whistleblowing and its profound effect on the public discourse. A recording of the event is available to watch here.

The post Whistleblowing Women: How Female Tech Workers are Taking on Big Tech appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.

The recently published Tech Worker Handbook offers essential support for individuals considering whether they should come forward in the public interest.

Frances Haugen’s pivotal testimony and disclosures about Facebook have the entire world talking. As a result, politicians across country and party lines are finally coalescing around a common understanding: Big Tech platforms must be better regulated and held accountable for the harms their algorithms impose on society. When taking into account the degree to which so many aspects of today’s technology-driven lives are impacted by the choices made by Big Tech corporations, Haugen's testimony underscores a pressing concern about the lack of accountability. People everywhere want to know: What can be done to stop these harms? And just as important: What else are the tech titans not telling us?

These conversations wouldn’t be happening without Haugen’s brave decision to come forward in the public interest. Big Tech corporations, which have long worked to skirt questions and deny knowledge that their products are indeed harmful, struggle to respond effectively to whistleblowers offering internal documents and insight. Courageous actions like those of Haugen serve an essential role in the campaign for better accountability. In general, as more whistleblowers come forward, more public and political pressure can be applied to enact meaningful change through legislation like the pending Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Given this profound impact, protections for potential whistleblowers -- such as California’s Silenced No More Act -- have begun to spread, too.

Still, choosing whether or not to come forward remains an extremely difficult decision to make -- one made all the more fraught when facing down Big Tech companies with seemingly endless resources. Whistleblower protections are neither universal, nor guaranteed, and all too often potential whistleblowers remain silent -- even when their voices could make a real difference for millions across the globe -- because they are unsure how to navigate the complex path ahead.

That’s why last week’s release of The Tech Worker Handbook is such a game changer for individuals debating whether they should speak out in the public interest. Co-created by People vs Big Tech coalition member The Signals Network, in partnership with Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma, Lioness, Whistleblowing International Network, and Matt Mitchell of the Ford Foundation, this essential new resource empowers tech employees by providing them with the critical knowledge they need when considering making such a momentous decision. Already an expert in the space, The Signals Network is a nonprofit organisation that helps whistleblowers and journalists work together to hold powerful interests -- like Big Tech -- accountable.

“The revelations shared by Francis Haugen about Facebook and the Theranos trial currently underway emphasize the critical impact that tech whistleblowers play in safeguarding our democracy and well-being by speaking out,” said Executive Director, Delphine Halgand. “The Signals Network believes The Tech Worker Handbook is a vital piece of the puzzle in creating real accountability in the tech sector.”

GET THE KNOWLEDGE YOU NEED

If you are a tech worker who might have information related to a relevant “incident” at work, the Legal section created by The Signals Network is an essential, immediate read to ensure that you make the best decision for your own well-being. Based on the extensive experience of past and current whistleblowers (along with the people and organisations that provided help for them along the way), the section is designed to help potential whistleblowers understand the various legal implications and considerations related to coming forward. Notably, although the section addresses legal issues it does not provide legal advice -- nor are the included considerations intended to be deemed comprehensive or universally applicable. Rather, the guide “is meant to help you make informed decisions, to give a balanced and concrete overview of the possibilities and pathways, and to remove some of the uncertainty that so many former whistleblowers experienced in order to build your own overall strategy.”

“Whistleblowing can be a long and life-defining journey and it is important to know what your life may hold in the coming months and years and who you need to have on your side.” - The Tech Worker Handbook

Reviewing the guide in its entirety before you move forward can help you:

• Make a personal assessment of your situation, including understanding your goals and determining your risk tolerance level;
• Build the right team in order to best protect yourself and create the maximum impact;
• Know what lawyers have to offer, which type of attorney might be best for your situation, and when to work with them (spoiler: you should consider seeking legal advice ASAP -- the guide notes that doing so doesn’t lock you in to moving forward, but it does help you keep your options open and protect yourself); and
• Understand what it might be like to work with colleagues, unions, civil society organisations, members of the press, US Congress, and regulators as part of your process.

Key additional insight is offered into the complex components and ramifications of non-disclosure agreements, whistleblowing reward programs, internal reporting, work-based retaliation, and evidence documentation. As a way to provide direct commentary on the process, “Fifteen Lessons Learned” are also presented from whistleblowers and lawyers, including

• “Do not wait to talk to a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer ASAP. Your lawyer works for you. Tell them what you want to do.” - Ifeoma Ozoma (Pinterest whistleblower)
• “The world may not believe that the issue has the same significance that you think.” - Ben Wizner (Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project)
• “Talking to a reporter should not be your first step.” - Tyler Shultz (Theranos whistleblower)
• “Use secure apps, like Signal Messenger and ProtonMail, to communicate with your attorneys and others helping you.” - Mary Inman (Partner at Constantine Cannon LLP)
• “Do not obtain evidence improperly. You cannot commit a crime to catch a crime.” - Tom Devine (Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project)

LOOKING FORWARD

At base, The Signals Network and their partners want tech workers who are considering speaking out against corporate misconduct to know that support and expertise are available to help them make informed decisions about their next steps. The two most common themes whistleblowers bring up when discussing their journeys are: (1) coming forward is difficult, and (2) they wish they had had more support (or were grateful for the support they had). The Tech Worker Handbook is an attempt to acknowledge these realities and help ensure future whistleblowers have the resources and support they need to best navigate a complex situation in which risk can never be entirely eliminated, only mitigated.

The launch of The Tech Worker Handbook marks the launch of The Signals Network’s new Tech Accountability Project in collaboration with Amnesty International. In the coming months, The Signals Network will create and circulate more legal resources in partnership with Amnesty International for tech workers considering blowing the whistle in the United States and in other countries that are key tech hubs. Those interested in learning more should reach out to The Signals Network at thesignalsnetwork@protonmail.com.

We all benefit when potential whistleblowers are better informed. In the words of The Tech Worker Handbook: “Preparedness is Power.” Help spread the word by sharing this story or tweeting:

We ALL benefit from a world in which #techworkers are empowered to speak out in the public interest. Here’s how: https://techworkerhandbook.org/ #techworkerhandbook #PeopleVsBigTech @IfeomaOzoma,@Lioness_Stories, @geminiimatt, @OmidyarNetwork, @TheSignalsNetw, @whistleblowing

Interested in learning more about this ground-breaking guide and issue? Follow The Signals Network on Twitter or check out these articles:

• The Verge: Pinterest whistleblower Ifeoma Ozoma has a new way for tech workers to speak out
• Protocol: Being a tech whistleblower is dangerous and expensive. Now there’s a guide to the risks.
• Business Insider: The woman who went public about Pinterest's workplace problems created a handbook to help tech workers safely become whistleblowers
• Axios: Tech whistleblower launches site for tech whistleblowers
• Fast Company: Pinterest whistleblower launches resources to help tech employees speak out

The post Tech Whistleblowers Are No Longer Alone appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.