I am so excited to share my conversation with Kelly Stonelake! Kelly Stonelake is a business operator and technologist with nearly 15 years of experience at Meta, where she held senior roles in product marketing and organizational leadership. During her tenure, she raised concerns about child safety and internal misconduct and faced retaliation after senior leadership chose to conceal risks rather than address them. The gap between Meta’s stated values and her lived experience led to a severe loss of functioning and a fight for her life. Following her departure, Kelly became a whistleblower and advocate for stronger protections for children online, greater tech accountability, awareness of autistic burnout and suicide risk, and safer workplaces for marginalized people. Her work focuses on challenging the concentration of power in technology and advancing equity, accountability, and systemic reform. Kelly recently testified before the Washington State Senate in support of SB 5708 on addictive feeds and SB 5784 on AI companions, sharing first-hand accounts of child exposure, data collection without parental consent, and corporate retaliation against those who spoke up. Please visit Kelly Stonelake on Substack at Overturned by Kelly Stonelake . 02:16 – 10:40 | From early idealism to the inside of Facebook Kelly traces her early interests in journalism, constitutional debate, and technology, leading to nearly 15 years at Facebook. She describes the early years before the algorithmic feed, when the mission felt real and principled. She reflects on Cambridge Analytica, internal decision-making, and how loyalty, good faith, and “doing the right thing” slowly became tools for accumulating power. 10:41 – 29:24 | Horizon Worlds, retaliation, and the open secret about kids Kelly recounts her time as the only woman on the senior leadership team for Horizon Worlds. She describes discovering that children were already using the product through adult accounts, being exposed to adults without parental consent, while Meta collected vast amounts of data in violation of federal law. She speaks plainly about misogyny, silencing women, attorney-client privilege used to avoid accountability, and the moment the rollout was paused for “quality” reasons while the truth stayed buried. 29:25 – 1:02:00 | The harms parents, therapists, and social workers need to understand Kelly lays out, in clear and specific terms, the dangers children face across social platforms: • Sextortion pipelines that move from shame to suicide in hours or days • Relentless bullying amplified by anonymity and disappearing messages • Algorithmic feeds that escalate vulnerability into self-harm content • Drug acquisition through social apps leading to fentanyl deaths • Viral challenges that kill curious kids She explains how “teen accounts” and parental controls function as sugar pills. They reassure parents without protecting children. 1:02:01 – 1:11:30 | A chapter for parents Kelly speaks directly to parents. Delay smartphones as long as possible. She recommends no social media. Give yourself permission to reevaluate decisions with new information and self-compassion. She shares how technology can exist in a home without extractive platforms, from family computers to creative and educational tools. She names the economic manipulation at play and explains why neurodivergent children face disproportionate risk. This is not a parenting failure. It is a systemic one. 1:11:31 – 1:21:53 | Moral injury, refusing blood money, and choosing truth Kelly shares her mental health collapse, autistic burnout, and the moment she refused severance rather than sign an agreement holding Meta harmless. She speaks about privilege, principle, and filing a lawsuit for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and retaliation. The conversation closes with the power of parent survivors, the force of love over extraction, and the belief that even against Big Tech, truth endures. Resources and Links Kelly Stonelake’s Substack: Overturned by Kelly Stonelake Alison Crosthwait’s newsletter A reminder to all of us in these challenging times: Take care of yourself. Find fresh air. Feel the ground. Remember that we are not alone. Got an idea for the podcast? Comments? Submit them here.
