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A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own
Two ex-Facebook employees founded the nonprofit Integrity Institute to clean up tech platforms. WIRED reporting reveals that it’s now reeling amid fights on Slack and one founder’s resignation after an external HR investigation.
Major tensions began to build inside the institute in March last year, when Massachi unveiled an internal document on Slack titled “How We Work” that barred use of terms including “solidarity,” “radical,” and “free market,” which he said come off as partisan and edgy. He also encouraged avoiding the term BIPOC, an acronym for “Black, Indigenous, and people of color,” which he described as coming from the “activist space.” His manifesto seemed to echo the workplace principles that cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase had published in 2020, which barred discussions of politics and social issues not core to the company, drawing condemnation from some other tech workers and executives. Allen worried the head-spinning episode could leave some members feeling that the institute was no more inviting a place for open discussion than the likes of Google or Meta—tech giants whose faults had inspired many of the nonprofit’s staff and supporters to join its cause.
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