If you’ve been a loyal Brew reader, you know that in recent weeks Facebook’s been rocked by a huge leak of internal company documents.

Last night, in an interview on 60 Minutes, the source of those leaks revealed herself: former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen.

Haugen, who worked for almost two years on Facebook’s civic misinformation team before leaving in May, said she became increasingly concerned that the company was prioritizing engagement over user safety and wellbeing. Two of her accusations that have made big waves: 1) that Facebook contributed to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol by allowing the spread of misinformation and 2) that it knew Instagram was harmful to teens’ mental health but didn’t take action.

Haugen was so concerned that she gathered reams of internal research and distributed them to folks who could do something about it.

• Haugen sent those documents (tens of thousands of pages worth) to the WSJ, which published a series of investigations called the Facebook Files.
• She also sent them to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints that allege Facebook misled investors.

Facebook is blowing the whistle on Haugen

The company is going on offense to contain the fallout of a scandal that’s already bigger than the Cambridge Analytica data collection controversy in 2018.

Before the interview aired, Facebook’s VP of Policy and Global Affairs Nick Clegg circulated a 1,500-word memo to employees arguing that Haugen’s complaints are simply not backed up by the data. “What evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization,” Clegg wrote.

Looking ahead…we’ll hear more from Haugen when she testifies before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

At least 126,000 gallons of spilled oil has spread into a slick covering roughly 13 square miles off the coast of Southern California. It has the markings of a “potential ecological disaster,” Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said, over fears the oil could harm local wildlife. The oil spill forced officials to close miles of beaches and cancel the final day of the popular Pacific Airshow yesterday.

It is one of California’s biggest oil spills in years.

So what caused it? A broken pipeline connected to the offshore Elly oil rig, Ocean County Supervisor Katrina Foley said.

On Sunday, oil stopped leaking from the pipeline, and now the race is on to prevent the worst environmental consequences. The Coast Guard helped build 2,050 feet of floating barriers to contain the huge oil slick from flowing into wetlands and other ecologically sensitive areas.

Big picture: Environmental leaders said oil spills, which are notoriously difficult to clean up, could be felt by local wildlife for years.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has spent more than $100 million on properties around the world, including a cliff-top mansion in Malibu. Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis used shell companies to buy a chateau in southern France for $22 million.

We know this due to a huge trove of leaked private financial records that show how the top 1%, including billionaires and world leaders, use offshore accounts to evade taxes and conceal assets.

These documents, called the “Pandora Papers,” represent one of the biggest leaks of financial information in history. The findings were published yesterday in a report compiled by 150 global media outlets.

• If that sounds like a lot of people working on this, it’s because there was an unprecedented amount of material. Journalists had to sift through nearly 3 terabytes of data, equivalent to ~750,000 photos stored on a smartphone, per the AP.

Big picture: The Pandora Papers are the sequel to 2016’s Panama Papers, financial records leaked from the defunct offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca. But yesterday’s report is on another level—records were collected from 14 offshore financial services providers.

Looking ahead...the impact of the new financial docs is still TBD. But at least in Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan said his government will investigate the Pakistani citizens named in the documents.

Stat: Thanks to its App Store, Apple earned more profits from games ($8.5 billion) than Microsoft, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, and Sony combined in fiscal 2019, according to a WSJ analysis. But its role as gatekeeper of the gaming world is under threat as rivals like Fortnite maker Epic Games launch legal grenades.

Quote: “You think people care what you think, and then you care less what people think, and then you realize no one cared, anyway.”

In an interview with the WSJ, Tom Brady shared one of his biggest learnings from getting older: Stop worrying about how people think about you, because they aren’t thinking about you. It appears to be working—Brady became the NFL’s all-time leading passer in his New England homecoming last night.

Watch: Love, hope, and worry in drought-ridden Page, Arizona. (Morning Brew)

SCOTUS is back: The Supreme Court returns today to hear in-person arguments for the first time since March 2020. This fall is going to feature a blockbuster slate, with major cases over abortion, gun regulations, and religious expression.

Jobs report: The August jobs report whiff raised concerns about the pace of the economic recovery. This Friday we’ll learn whether things picked back up on the hiring front in September. Only a shockingly low number of jobs added—like, zero—would delay the Fed from tapering its stimulus program in November.

Tech updates: Anyone else a proud green texter? The new Android 12 mobile operating system is expected to launch today, and Windows 11 is coming tomorrow.

Everything else:

• No Time to Die, the last Bond flick featuring Daniel Craig as 007, hits US theaters on Friday after earning an impressive $119 million overseas (without China).
• After a wild weekend in baseball, the playoffs will start this week with two win-or-go-home Wild Card games: Red Sox vs. Yankees on Tuesday and Cardinals vs. Dodgers on Wednesday.
• It’s Nobel Prize week. The winner of the grandaddy of them all, the Nobel Peace Prize, will be announced Friday.

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Dive back into the week.

Shallow dive: Wholesome animal content
Medium dive: The most counterintuitive facts in math, CS, and physics
Deep dive: Why oil doesn’t corrupt Norway
Cannonball: Lists of lists of lists on Wikipedia

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Do you know what the initials in the following names stand for?

1. John F. Kennedy
2. George H.W. Bush
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Mary J. Blige
5. Susan B. Anthony
6. George R.R. Martin
7. Michael J. Fox
   

1. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
2. George Herbert Walker Bush
3. Francis Scott Fitzgerald
4. Mary Jane Blige
5. Susan Brownell Anthony
6. George Raymond Richard Martin
7. Trick question: J doesn’t stand for anything—Michael’s middle name is Andrew.