Facebook’s departure was a slow fade, but its last gasp came in May 2021, when Ms. Bowen, who had led the project since 2017, left the company. In a farewell email to Mr. Slocum and others that day, which was obtained by The Times through a public records request, she wrote that she thought Facebook “had modest awareness of the gargantuan task that was first envisioned.”The email told the broad strokes of the story and ended on a melancholy but optimistic note. “We moved a rusted 25-year-old needle, re-energized the community, and awakened the region to possibility,” she wrote. “Admittedly, we remain stuck in the reali …
