WASHINGTON — Social media researcher Joan Donovan says she is aware of the precise second her profession started to go off the rails.
The second led to her departure from Harvard University in what she calls a firing, which Harvard says was something however. The ensuing dispute has real-world implications for educational freedom, social media and company affect over analysis.
On Oct. 29, 2021, Donovan, a Harvard analysis director centered on social media and disinformation, says she was invited to deal with a prestigious group of rich donors to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, referred to as the Dean’s Council.
The assembly passed off over Zoom, and donors logged on from their houses and workplaces. Donovan says she had been invited to current the findings of her analysis to the group – a plum task she believed was due to the prominence and significance of her work.
“I used to be so excited,” Donovan advised CNBC. “I believed that that is a tremendous validation of the work that I had been doing.”
Donovan started to transient the donors on her analysis into web disinformation and its affect on American society. The assembly fell simply weeks after an explosive second in social media: A former worker of Meta, nonetheless referred to as Facebook on the time, named Frances Haugen turned whistleblower and went public with a secret trove of hundreds of pages of inside paperwork from the tech big.
Haugen had testified before Congress on Oct. 5 that the paperwork revealed Facebook knew its companies have been inflicting social hurt, spreading misinformation and hurting youngsters. But she mentioned the corporate selected earnings over security.
Now Donovan shared a bombshell of her personal with the Harvard donors: She advised them that she, too, had obtained the trove of paperwork, an enormous file she thought-about the “most necessary paperwork in web historical past.”
She laid out an argument comparable to the one Haugen had been making on nationwide tv: Facebook knew of the hurt its companies prompted, however selected to do nothing.
Central to Donovan’s considering was the concept Facebook was not only a sufferer of dangerous guys who exploited new know-how for their very own ends, however that Facebook really designed techniques that incentivized essentially the most provocative content material.
“The downside was that the design of the know-how itself — social media itself, was giving dangerous actors a primary mover benefit, particularly when it got here to novel and outrageous content material, which is what goes viral,” she advised CNBC in an interview.
In different phrases, Donovan mentioned, what was going improper was not essentially on the earth outdoors Facebook, however inside the corporate’s algorithms.
When Donovan completed explaining her findings on the Zoom name, she says she observed one man on her display screen elevating his hand eagerly to communicate. He was Elliot Schrage, a member of the Dean’s Council donor group at Harvard and a former vice chairman of worldwide communications and public coverage at Facebook.
Donovan says Schrage disagreed sharply with her criticism of Facebook – so intensely that after the assembly wrapped up, Donovan despatched a textual content to her superior on the Kennedy School, asking, “Should I be anxious about the way in which Schrage received mad at me?”
“I believe we should always have anxious if he DIDN’T get mad,” the supervisor replied, in accordance to a textual content message transcript offered to CNBC.
“I believed you have been simply terrific. So subtle and truthful in your considering and evaluation. Made me proud.”
Schrage declined to remark.
Facebook has publicly denied allegations that it turns a blind eye to harms brought on by its companies so as to revenue from them.
In a prolonged response to a 2021 Wall Street Journal collection primarily based on allegations made by Haugen, the whistleblower, Facebook’s vice chairman of worldwide affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, wrote this: “At the center of this collection is an allegation that’s simply plain false: that Facebook conducts analysis after which systematically and willfully ignores it if the findings are inconvenient for the corporate.”
“It’s a declare which might solely be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from particular person items of leaked materials in a approach that presents advanced and nuanced points as if there’s solely ever one proper reply,” wrote Clegg.
As Donovan tells it, assist from her superiors did not final lengthy after she dove into her Facebook analysis.
In early November, the then-dean of the Kennedy School, Douglas Elmendorf, emailed Donovan to comply with up on the Dean’s Council assembly, with questions on her analysis into Facebook. The firm had changed its name to Meta on Oct. 28.
Among the problems he mentioned he wished to deal with, in accordance to a replica of the e-mail offered to CNBC, have been “How you outline the issue of misinformation for each evaluation and potential responses (algorithm-adjusting or coverage making) when there isn’t any unbiased arbiter of fact.” And he mentioned he would really like to know “How the analysis you are conducting gives a foundation for feedback you are making about present occasions.”
The e-mail alarmed Donovan, who believed the language in it echoed speaking factors Facebook executives had been utilizing publicly. And she says she knew that Dean Elmendorf had a detailed private relationship with Sheryl Sandberg, the then-chief working officer of Facebook’s mum or dad firm, Meta Platforms.
Elmendorf had been Sandberg’s undergraduate advisor at Harvard, and Sandberg herself was a multimillion-dollar donor to Harvard’s Kennedy School. Elmendorf attended Sandberg’s wedding ceremony in the summertime of 2022.
“I received referred to as into the principal’s workplace and was questioned about why I’m speaking about Facebook,” Donovan mentioned. “Interestingly, the dean by no means requested me about Twitter or YouTube or, , Google, which we additionally investigated. It was actually about having the interior papers at Facebook and what we plan to do with them.”
Through a Harvard spokesman, Elmendorf declined to remark for the document.
Through an worker, Sandberg declined to remark. Harvard officers advised The Washington Post that Elmendorf and Sandberg by no means mentioned Donovan.
The subsequent month, a charity operated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse Priscilla Chan – each themselves former Harvard college students – made a rare announcement: It was pledging a half-billion {dollars} over 15 years to create a new institute at Harvard for the research of synthetic intelligence, to be named after Zuckerberg’s mom’s household.
The scale of the contribution – and its meant use – raised eyebrows on campus. A column within the Harvard Crimson written by two undergraduates referred to as acceptance of the donation a “damning misstep by our establishment.”
The college students, Guillermo S. Hava and Eleanor V. Wikstrom, wrote: “Our establishment — our complete elite greater training system, arguably — has a penchant for auctioning off educational priorities to the very best bidder.” The Crimson column didn’t point out Donovan.
The December 2021 reward was the largest, however not the primary, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative donation to Harvard: Since 2018, the foundation’s disclosures present it has bestowed Harvard or entities affiliated with it with dozens of grants price a number of thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
Donovan says her place at Harvard grew to become more and more untenable, because the months went on. She got here to imagine that directors wished her to go away. “I grew to become persona non grata once I turned my consideration particularly to Facebook,” says Donovan.
The scenario got here to a head in a gathering with Elmendorf in the summertime of 2022, Donovan says, at which the dean advised her she would have to wind down her program, referred to as the Technology and Social Change Research Project, by June 2024.
Donovan says Elmendorf additionally advised her in the course of the assembly, “I would like you to know that you simply don’t have educational freedom,” including “I would like to remind you that you simply’re employees right here.”
As a employees member, Donovan was not afforded the identical protections which can be prolonged to tenured professors.
Donovan felt constrained, and says she was advised that for the rest of the mission she couldn’t begin any new tasks or rent further staffers.
“That to me is an egregious and anti-intellectual obstruction of educational freedom,” Donovan mentioned. “It contradicts your complete purpose why a college exists, which is to share the sunshine with the world.”
On July 13, practically a yr earlier than the date she says she had been given for the conclusion of her mission, Donovan says she was knowledgeable that Harvard was ending the mission on Aug. 31 and that her function as analysis director was being eradicated.
Donovan’s account of her departure was laid out in a disclosure doc despatched to Harvard on Nov. 28 by Whistleblower Aid, the identical nonprofit group that labored with Facebook whistleblower Haugen in 2021.
Whistleblower Aid despatched Donovan’s allegations to the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, which is reviewing the fabric, in accordance to an official.
The group additionally raised Donovan’s allegations with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. A spokesperson for the division mentioned the workplace doesn’t verify or deny the existence of complaints.
In a press release to CNBC, Harvard Kennedy School Director of Public Affairs James Smith disputed Donovan’s account of her departure. “The doc’s allegations of unfair therapy and donor interference are false,” Smith mentioned. “The narrative is filled with inaccuracies and baseless insinuations, notably the suggestion that Harvard Kennedy School allowed Facebook to dictate its strategy to analysis.”
Smith defined that Donovan’s scenario was associated to her employment standing on the college. “By longstanding coverage to uphold educational requirements, all analysis tasks at Harvard Kennedy School want to be led by college members,” he mentioned.
“Joan Donovan was employed as a employees member (not a college member) to handle a media manipulation mission. When the unique college chief of the mission left Harvard, the School tried for a while to determine one other college member who had time and curiosity to lead the mission. After that effort didn’t succeed, the mission was given greater than a yr to wind down. Joan Donovan was not fired, and most members of the analysis group selected to stay on the School in new roles.”
Donovan concludes that the core discovering of her analysis was antithetical to Facebook, and finally to Harvard.
“I imagine Harvard took me out as a result of I used to be not toeing the corporate line about platforms, which is you may keep secure from corporations should you counsel that it is a entire of the web downside,” she mentioned. “Social media shouldn’t be to blame.”
What she had concluded about Facebook was fairly the alternative – the design of social media itself was inflicting issues: “I used to be selecting aside their design and saying the way in which this works is enabling genocide, terrorism, hate, harassment, incitement.”
Donovan was out.
“Harvard hastened my exit by firing me,” she mentioned. “But I really feel actually good about what we did to be sure that my group was secure, to be sure that the data that wanted to get out there was out there.”
Smith advised CNBC that Harvard University and the Kennedy School proceed to carry out misinformation and social media analysis to today. He famous {that a} college member constructed and posted on-line the Facebook Archive, consisting of paperwork initially leaked by Haugen.
In October, the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and Harvard’s Public Interest Tech Lab collectively printed the Facebook Archive, containing the paperwork obtained by Haugen in a searchable database open to the general public at FBarchive.org.
A spokesperson for Meta declined to remark.
A spokesperson for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative mentioned the group, “had no involvement in Dr. Donovan’s departure from Harvard and was unaware of that improvement earlier than public reporting on it.”