Fb’s Former Elections Boss Now Questions Social Media’s Influence on Politics

Now she is pitching a unique message. After rising to change into Fb’s public-policy director for world elections, Ms. Harbath left the corporate final 12 months and teamed with a bunch now advising lawmakers in Washington and Europe on laws advocating extra guardrails round social media.

In her position at Fb, now Meta Platforms Inc., Ms. Harbath had been the face of the corporate on many political points and a liaison with governments and events world wide. She says that when she resigned in March, she had come to consider that until there may be pressing intervention from governments and tech platforms, social media will probably incubate future political violence like that of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I nonetheless consider social media has accomplished extra good than hurt in politics, but it surely’s shut,” she says. “Possibly it’s 52-48—and trending south.”

Ms. Harbath, 41 years previous, is the highest-ranking former Fb govt now working with the Integrity Institute, a startup nonprofit based by former staff who had labored on figuring out and mitigating potential societal harms attributable to the corporate’s merchandise. The institute is now advising lawmakers and assume tanks world wide on these points.

Ms. Harbath, now additionally a fellow at a number of Washington assume tanks targeted on election points, joins a rising variety of former Fb executives who’ve gone public with their criticisms of the corporate. She says she now not thinks her former firm, together with Chief Government

Mark Zuckerberg,

has the need to handle its core issues in the way in which she believes is critical.

“I’m disillusioned in management, and I hate the truth that I’m disillusioned in management,” she stated of the corporate.

Meta spokesman

Andy Stone

stated Ms. Harbath “helped symbolize the corporate across the globe. We thank her and need her the perfect.”

Ms. Harbath says that Meta is so consumed with every day crises that it neglects extra proactive planning, and that her efforts to construct a plan for 2024 electoral threats had been dismissed. Amongst different issues, she says, if tech platforms together with Fb don’t draw higher strains between information and paid political propaganda, operatives will systematically erode the excellence.

Relating to the occasions of Jan. 6, 2021, for instance, Fb and different social-media platforms had been used extensively by these contesting the election outcomes and organizing the rallies that culminated in violence. She stated the corporate needs to be doing extra to scrutinize each whether or not it may have accomplished extra to go off violence of the kind that erupted on Jan. 6 and what position its platforms have performed in making politics extra vitriolic.

“Whereas they’re proper that they don’t deserve sole blame, there needs to be extra soul-searching,” she says.

Mr. Stone stated Meta invested closely in its 2020 election preparations and continues to work on the problems that she described as causes of concern.

Fb’s coverage staff, led by Ms. Harbath’s former boss Joel Kaplan, typically didn’t settle for modifications pushed by inner researchers and staffers on the corporate’s integrity staff charged with assessing potential hurt to customers.

Paperwork reviewed by The Wall Avenue Journal present that integrity staffers felt the coverage staff typically positioned enterprise and political considerations above the dangers to customers. Fb has stated it invested billions of {dollars} and employed tens of hundreds of staff devoted to stopping such harms.

“Inside Fb, Katie was the face of the individuals who advised us ‘no,’ ” stated Sahar Massachi, one of many Integrity Institute’s founders. Ms. Harbath had been “the honorable opposition,” he stated; he credit her with bringing political savvy and connections to the brand new group.

Ms. Harbath praises Meta’s work on voter registration and political-ad transparency as groundbreaking, and says as a guide she hopes to assist exterior teams discover different methods to make social media a more healthy a part of politics.

“Individuals know the place to place a whistleblower and so they know the place to place a loyal firm spokesperson,” says Nu Wexler, who labored on the coverage communications staff with Ms. Harbath and is now a associate in a Washington, D.C., communications agency. “I don’t know they know the place to place somebody like Katie.”

Ms. Harbath grew up in a conservative Wisconsin household in a paper-mill city, and attended the College of Wisconsin with plans to be a journalist.

After commencement, she landed a job on the Republican Nationwide Committee, the place her restricted expertise running a blog earned the 23-year-old a task overseeing its digital-campaign efforts.

A number of years later, she joined Fb, the place she finally oversaw a employees of as many as 60 staff that skilled political events in easy methods to greatest use the platform and helped design the corporate’s election coverage. She says there was a working assumption all through the corporate that extra Fb utilization would make governments extra clear and develop individuals’s means to have interaction in public discourse.

Ms. Harbath says her doubts in regards to the premise originated in 2016, when elections within the Philippines and the U.S. and the Brexit marketing campaign within the U.Ok. had been awash in misinformation unfold on Fb.

After that, Ms. Harbath says, her position shifted from primarily making an attempt to advertise Fb as a constructive power to extra typically making an attempt to forestall overseas governments, criminals, troll farms and different unhealthy actors from abusing it.

As public criticism of Fb mounted, she says, executives put a heavy give attention to what internally was referred to as defensibility—forming insurance policies based mostly partly on whether or not the corporate would face exterior assaults or criticism. She says her job turned consumed by “escalations”—an inner time period for potential public-relations crises and high-profile complaints.

“Eighty p.c of my time was spent doing escalations,” she says.

A restructuring in her division stripped her of a lot of her authority over election coverage heading into 2020, she stated, and the corporate rejected her proposal to refocus her work on heading off electoral threats earlier than 2024, when numerous main world elections are scheduled. On Jan. 6, she watched the riot on the Capitol unfold on tv.

“That was a key day by way of deciding to go away,” she stated. “If I wasn’t going to have the ability to have affect internally, I wanted to go someplace the place I may really do one thing.”

Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com