To leak or not to leak?
Formal whistleblowing is not common, but more informal leaking can be. What’s the difference, and will it change things?
A few days ago, Meta proactively announced it had fired about twenty employees for sharing confidential information.
A story about the dismissals, published by The Verge, cites something Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth said in a staff-wide meeting: that the “funny thing…happening with these leaks” is that “a lot of times people think, ‘Ah, okay, this is leaked, therefore it’ll put pressure on us to change things.’ The opposite is more likely.”
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Obviously Bosworth and Meta have an incentive to keep Meta employees productive and in line. So making them feel that leaking “won’t matter anyway” is not a terrible messaging strategy. Those who were on the fence about leaking but still care about their jobs might be dissuaded from leaking–and those who never had “leaker” wiring in them will continue to put their heads down and move on.
But Bosworth is touching on a tension that is central to workers of any industry with a consciousness outside of their daily duties: whether it is smart to play the game and influence a company’s ways from the inside, or to go rogue and apply pressure externally. And if they go outside with their concerns or information, will it even matter?
Talking to a lawyer first is always a good idea. But after that, it’s hard for a one size fits all approach here, because everyone’s psychological motives, financial standing, and immigration, health, and family statuses are unique. Not all information is the same in the eyes of the law, or in the eyes of the culture and the court of public opinion. And of course, we all have different definitions of what “will it matter” actually means–from seismic law-changing to being a thorn in the side of one of Meta’s new in-house employment lawyers.
A lot has been said about the word “whistleblower” in this context, but here we are not talking about whistleblowers. (In general, I’ve found it unusual for anyone to actually define themselves as a “whistleblower,” especially when the word is currently synonymous with being attention-seeking, a snitch, or an overly self-righteous person committed to an unattainable code of moral purity. Plus, as many whistleblower lawyers will tell you, the bar for these types of cases is incredibly high.)
What we are talking about here is the very normal human desire to share opinions or experiences with the outside world, especially when there is a) a concern or emotional reason to do so, or b) an insider’s look at information that is otherwise siphoned off but in need of unbiased examination. Ironically, I think this is the same human desire that fuels social media.
And when an employee is faced with constant dead-ends or silencing, sharing outwardly can be a deeply personal matter of reclaiming agency. Whether it’s a snippet of a company meeting, providing information to a journalist, or outright suing a company with boatloads of evidence, it’s a step towards taking back power. According to platform Blind, a sort of anonymous Reddit for employees, “Since the presidential inauguration, Blind has seen a significant increase in both users and posts across the platform and notably within the technology companies as they respond to the changing policy and macro environment.”
For these reasons, I don’t think leaking or sharing information will stop anytime soon. In fact, given the craven capitulation by Big Tech to the MAGA agenda, I think it’ll be happening a lot more. But neither will cracking down on it. According to a corporate investigator I talked with, companies are using surveillance methods to detect whether people are forwarding lots of emails, printing lots of documents, or accessing their work technology from strange locations. And while these automated systems that detect suspicious activity are only as good as the humans reviewing the results and conducting subsequent investigations, companies can and will follow through with terminating people. It is possible to go undetected, but you have to be very careful.
Corporate investigations can sometimes be for good reason: for example, identifying a worker who is sharing national security data with non-state or state actors for profit, or an employee maliciously leaking trade secrets in an act of vengeance. But sometimes, as Meta stated, the investigations can be used to fire people regardless of whether intentions are malicious or noble.
Some seem to think that Bosworth is correct–that leaking right now won’t make a difference with these big tech companies, because they are too ubiquitous. But that also hasn’t stopped a former Meta director from suing the company for “silencing women,” employees from rejecting Meta recruiter’s overtures, or other social media companies from cropping up to take market share from Meta products like Threads or Instagram Reels.
Bo Young Lee, the former head of DEI at Uber, shared a nuanced take on LinkedIn: that engineers seeking a different culture might want to leave big tech altogether rather than trying to be an informant or reforming it from the inside. That said, she thinks tech companies will notice the loss of talent, which long-term could force change:
It’s also worth noting that should someone have a whistleblower claim about big tech, however rare, the change in political power doesn’t undercut their claim. According to whistleblower lawyer Poppy Alexander, “Whistleblower laws are unusually bipartisan in their supporters and that support has held strong. Of course, whistleblowers have been rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse for decades, and remain the best source of information for government agencies serious about finding fraud.”
Unless we become characters in the plot of Apple TV show Severance–in which people’s brains are split between their work self and private self, though that doesn’t work out so well–this friction will continue. Bosworth may be right that leaking won’t matter in the short-term, and that the public firings will have a chilling effect. But maybe some employees are thinking about the long game–caring less about big tech share prices in the immediate, and more about our shared future society.
Whether you are whistleblowing or leaking, the following may apply…
Do’s:
Talk to an employment lawyer or a whistleblower advocacy group
Establish off-the-record confidence with a journalist
Speak with a mental health professional (not a work-affiliated one) to walk though the possible paths
Don'ts:
Forward yourself lots of information from your work e-mail to personal e-mail in quick succession
Look up resources for sharing information on your work phone
Go forward without speaking with a partner or spouse who could be impacted by your decision financially
Do you have a story about leaks? Get in touch.
AD: Tech policy and activism group Fight For the Future is hiring a senior campaign director. $100-$130k, remote, 4-day work week (Apply here before March 17.)
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Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post—Former editor Marty Baron writes about where Jeff Bezos went wrong, for The Atlantic.
Elon Musk Cold Open on SNL—Mike Myers as Elon Musk screaming “legalize comedy! legalize comedy!” got me through Monday.