Broken Code

Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets

By: Jeff Horwitz

Narrated by: Jeff Horwitz

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative 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

"Broken Code fillets Facebook’s strategic failures to address its part in the spread of disinformation, political fracturing and even genocide. The book is stuffed with eye-popping, sometimes Orwellian statistics and anecdotes that could have come only from the inside." —New York Times Book Review

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 in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they—and the world—had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms.

Facebook 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 the platform’s supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood.

Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook's viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform—often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement—were higher than Facebook's leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook’s damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer.

Broken Code tells the story of these employees and 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, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can’t be resolved by strapping on a headset.

©2023 Jeff Horwitz (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Jeff Horwitz has written a blockbuster expose of Facebook, the notoriously secretive social media giant whose benign mission—connecting people—masked a growing propensity towards some of humanity’s worst impulses. Populated by concerned, brave employees who defied their employer and leaked thousands of pages of internal documents to Horwitz, with the imperious, remote Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants at the center, Broken Code is brilliant reporting and a page-turning narrative of immense importance.” —James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author

“A dogged and meticulous reporter, Jeff Horwitz is at the height of his powers in Broken Code, a penetrating portrait of one of the most significant companies in the world and of one of the great new challenges of this technological era.” —Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author

"An unsettling account….Stories of executives bumbling their way through or outright ignoring issues within the company are breathtaking and troubling… Horwitz’s reporting shines...This convincingly makes the case that Facebook’s pursuit of growth at any cost has had disastrous offline consequences." —Publishers Weekly

Very informative

Slow start but there’s a lot to cover. Much of the weird quirks in face book and insta will start to make sense.

Tremendous reporting 

Very well sourced and written on difficult yet important topics. Barely off outstanding, it’s just hard to leave together such a desperate story eloquently

Accurate, eye-opening. FB caused grave damage

So grateful to Jeff Horwitz and Frances Haugen and others like Samidh Chakrabarti and the integrity staffers who fought (they shouldn't have even had to fight...) to protect democracy, truth, and simply to prevent the rise of unnecessary anger and outrage that has lead to real world violence.

I used to have a neutral feeling about Zuckerberg, but after learning how many times he directly thwarted progress towards safety, decency, and truth in the world, I now pray he has a wake up call.

In this book we learn how Trump was basically elected because of the flourishing misinformation, false anger (anger based on falsehoods, used to manipulate people), and Facebook stood by and their algorithm actually EXCEPTIONALLY ENCOURAGED and spread this. Turned its spark into a roaring wildfire 100x or even 1000x what it was in reality.

Because of this, millions of people were swept up in misinformation that swayed not only their votes, but how they saw and treated their fellow men and women.

Racism -> began a sharp uptick due to this

Division -> In places like Myanmar and India and many other countries, hate speech ballooned and turned people against each other.

Flat Earthers -> silly ideas about the world and reality like the "flat earth theory" have risen from being what they really are, into now actually being followed by many people. People don't even agree that we've been to the Moon anymore.

As someone who studies near death experiences and the bigger picture of life we're in, power and profit (what Zuckerberg's actions so far have been based on) are not what we're here for. We can't take those with us, and they aren't what matters in the bigger picture.

Zuckerberg talks a lot about wanting to make the world a better place. The evidence in this book shows all the times he's directly stepped on those trying to help FB/Meta do that. He needs a wake up call, and I'm so glad this book is getting the truth more out.

Think about this: Without the "broken code" in FB's algorithm, we wouldn't have nearly the amount of hate and anger and racism, walking-back of progress that we've had in the past years. It's not a coincidence or a loose correlation. Facebook directly caused most of this, especially in the run up to the 2016 election.

Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg know what to do and they just have to do it.

Flawless

I’ve read a few books on Facebook fiascos but this one was amazing and probably the best of them. It really digs into the algorithms they used, tried to change, the side effects, and management’s evil crusade to let the world burn for single digit engagement increases on their platform. Highly recommended if you’re even a tiny bit interested in the subject matter, and absolutely eye opening.