The Uber files lit up the darkness of big tech, and showed why we need whistleblowers | Frances Haugen

Governments alone can't keep the public safe. People must feel able to speak out - and our laws must protect them

This week, more than 124,000 documents disclosed by the whistleblower Mark MacGann, Uber's former chief lobbyist for Europe, detailed how Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments in order to aggressively build its global empire.

Last year, I disclosed thousands of documents to the US government revealing Facebook's negligence about the harm its products were doing. As with the documents supplied by MacGann, the public would have never known this information even existed had a whistleblower not tipped them off.

Frances Haugen is a former Facebook product manager and an advocate for accountability and transparency in social media

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