Inside the big Facebook leak

Frances Haugen first met Jeff Horwitz, a tech-industry reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in early December on a hiking trail near the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.

She liked that he seemed thoughtful, and she liked that he had written about Facebook’s role in transmitting violent Hindu nationalism in India, a particular interest of hers. She also got the impression that he would support her as a person, rather than as a mere source who could supply him with the inside information she had picked up during her nearly two years as a product manager at Facebook.