Jane Manchun Wong

Timeline by topic

Topics follow the event kinds supplied in this index. Each entry links to its full record in the chronological timeline. Dates retain the precision supplied by the publisher.

Timeline

1. 1994-04-13Born in British Hong Kongbirth

   Grew up in Hong Kong; Chinese name 黃文津. Early press profiles give ages implying a slightly later birth year — see openQuestions.

   [19][20]
2. 2001Circumvents parental controls with Linuxother

   At about seven she replaced Windows with Linux on the family computer to defeat her parents' controls — the anecdote she gives for the start of her self-taught path.

   [19][24]
3. 2017-10-15First discovery: Facebook's résumé featuremilestone

   As a UMass Dartmouth undergrad, she spotted Facebook testing a LinkedIn-style 'work histories' résumé feature; screenshots surfaced via Matt Navarra and Facebook confirmed the test.

   [37][19]
4. 2018Facebook Dating and nearby-friends map leaksother

   Published screenshots of Facebook Dating's homepage before release and revealed a map feature showing nearby friends' locations.

   [19][24]
5. 2018-05-04First 'finding' tweet: Twitter's encrypted Secret DMmilestone

   Shortly after midnight she posted 'Twitter is working on End-to-End Encrypted Secret DM!' — the start of the near-daily findings feed.

   [27]
6. 2018-11First press profiles: SCMP, The Next Web, SCMP podcastmedia

   Zen Soo's SCMP profile, The Next Web's 'engineering detective' feature, and an Inside China Tech podcast episode introduced her method to a wide audience.

   [24][25][12]
7. 2019CNN and BBC profiles; freelance bug-bounty eramedia

   CNN ('This 24-year-old finds unreleased features') and the BBC ('The woman scooping Silicon Valley') profiled her; she told the BBC she spent up to 18 hours a weekend on code alongside paid bug-bounty work.

   [22][21]
8. 2019-04-18Reveals Instagram's hidden-like-counts testmilestone

   Reported Instagram was testing hiding like counts; Adam Mosseri confirmed the experiment about twelve days later — the scoop that defined her beat.

   [19][21]
9. 2019-10-20CNBC: Facebook employees rely on her feedmedia

   Reported that Facebook employees turned to the Hong Kong researcher's posts to learn what other internal teams were building.

   [23]
10. 2020Tatler Gen.T Leaders of Tomorrowaward

    Named to Tatler Asia's Gen.T list (Hong Kong, Technology).

    [2]
11. 2020-04-24Messenger Rooms bug-bounty write-uppublication

    Published her account of reporting a private-API abuse risk in Facebook's unreleased Messenger Rooms through the bug-bounty program.

    [6][10]
12. 2021-05-15Scoops Twitter Bluemilestone

    Revealed the name, $2.99 price, and feature set of Twitter's in-development subscription weeks before launch.

    [28][29]
13. 2021-12Forbes 30 Under 30 (2022 list), Social Mediaaward

    Named to the Forbes 30 Under 30: Social Media list published December 2021; Tatler's Asia's Most Influential list followed the same year.

    [17][19][2]
14. 2022-04-16Reveals the Twitter edit button's immutable designmilestone

    Found code showing edits would create a new tweet linked to prior versions rather than mutating the original — matching the design Twitter later shipped.

    [30]
15. 2022-04-22MIT Technology Review profilemedia

    Tanya Basu's profile, 'Spilling Silicon Valley's secrets, one tweet at a time,' documented her method, the harassment costs, and Meta's internal fan club.

    [27]
16. 2023-06 – 2024-10Software engineer at Meta on Instagram and ThreadsroleMetaSan Francisco

    Relocated from Hong Kong to San Francisco to join Meta; announced on Threads on launch day, July 5, 2023. The hire was celebrated publicly by Bosworth and Mosseri.

    [8][19][35]
17. 2024Threads Web wins Webby for Best Mobile User InterfaceawardMeta / Threads

    The Threads team's web client won a 2024 Webby; Wong lists it among her honors as a team member.

    [16][2]
18. 2024-10-16Laid off in Meta reorganizationotherMeta

    Her role was eliminated in cuts across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs; she announced it publicly on Threads.

    [34][35][36]
19. 2024-10-24Announces move to an unnamed Los Angeles startuproleLos Angeles

    Posted that she was joining an LA startup as a senior software engineer. Wikipedia's article text dates the move December 2024 while citing the post to October 24, 2024; the post is now unavailable.

    [19][9]
20. 2025Judges the Outside LLMs AI & Music hackathonotherSan Francisco

    Listed as a judge for the AI & Music hackathon at Outside Lands Festival.

    [18][2]
21. 2025-04Reveals Figma's in-development AI app makermilestone

    Post-Meta return to form: she surfaced Figma's Claude-powered AI app builder and 'Figma Sites' before announcement.

    [31]
22. 2025-04-21Named to SF Standard's SF 100 (The Thinkers)award

    The San Francisco Standard's influence list cited her for finding 'big tech's cheat codes.'

    [38]
23. 2025-12-23Publishes Waymo's unreleased Gemini ride-assistant system promptpublication

    Recovered the 1,200-line 'Waymo Ride Assistant Meta-Prompt' from the mobile app and published it with analysis; covered by TechCrunch and The Verge.

    [5][32]
24. 2026-08Builds a San Francisco 'openings radar'projectSan Francisco

    Applied her method to public city permits, registrations, and health filings to surface new restaurants and shops early — scooping the Animate pop-up, Numb, and the Corgi Cafe site.

    [39]

Themes

• If it ships in the build, it is disclosablestatedphilosophy

  Her working premise: code companies distribute to millions of devices is already public, so dormant features inside it are reportable facts, not secrets. 'There's no such thing as a secret beta anymore,' as Casey Newton put it — 'If it's in the code, Jane could find it.'

  [27][10][19]
• Findings, not leaksstatedbelief

  She draws a hard line between her work and leaking: leaks come from employees; her findings come from publicly available data and code. The distinction is her ethical and legal footing — journalism by reading what companies themselves shipped.

  [27]
• Transparency as the missionstatedbelief

  She wants tech companies to be more open about what they are building, arguing the public should not have to wait for press releases — and that if companies had been transparent, her work would not be needed.

  [17][27]
• Journalism by reversingreportedpractice

  Tweets plus screenshots, on a near-daily cadence at peak, became a wire service the press itself subscribed to: outlets cite her by name and Facebook employees reportedly read her feed for internal news.

  [21][23][27][3]
• The self-taught pathreportedpractice

  No degree, no newsroom, no employer authorization — she learned by taking things apart, from the childhood Linux swap to college-finals procrastination that became a career. She frames digging into apps as how she learns.

  [19][27][13]
• Bug bounties before headlinesreportedmethod

  When she finds a security risk rather than a feature, she reports it through bug-bounty channels before or instead of publicizing it — the Messenger Rooms write-up is her canonical example — keeping the disclosure ethic separate from the scoop ethic.

  [10][6][21]
• The cost of being the messengerstatedbelief

  She is candid that visibility brought harassment and depression — users angry about a feature treated her as its author. 'I wish more people realized I'm a person.' The theme recurs across the MIT Technology Review and Embedded interviews.

  [27][11]
• Anticipated by the engineers she coversreportedinfluence

  Her scrutiny changed corporate behavior: developers stopped assuming in-code features stay hidden, left 'Hi, Jane' messages in builds, and named an Instagram experiment 'What's up Jane' — the watched now watch back.

  [26][27]
• From outside leaker to inside engineer and backinferredpractice

  The arc — independent scoop artist, Meta engineer building the products she once leaked, laid-off researcher returning to public findings — is the index author's synthesis of the documented career moves, not a frame she has stated.

  [8][35][5]

Works and projects

• @wongmjane findings feed and wongmjane.com blogprojectongoing

  The running corpus of unreleased-feature discoveries — tweets, screenshots, mock-ups, and dated blog write-ups — published since 2017 and resumed in force after Meta.

  [1][3][40][27]
• Messenger Rooms bug-bounty write-upotherpublished2020-04-24

  Her disclosed account of reporting a private-API abuse risk in Facebook's unreleased Messenger Rooms via the bug-bounty program.

  [6]
• Threads (Meta) — engineering workproductreleased2023San Francisco

  As a Meta engineer on Instagram and Threads she helped build the products she used to leak; the team's Threads Web client won the 2024 Webby for Best Mobile User Interface. Individual feature attribution inside Meta is not public.

  [8][35][16]
• Waymo 'Ride Assistant Meta-Prompt' disclosure and analysisotherpublished2025-12-23

  Recovered and published the full 1,200-line system prompt for Waymo's unreleased Gemini-powered in-car assistant, with her own behavioral analysis.

  [5][32]
• San Francisco openings radarprojectongoing2026San Francisco

  A self-built tool scanning public city permits, business registrations, and health filings to surface new restaurants and shops early; she has not ruled out releasing it as a public app.

  [39]

Appearances

• The Verge Installer — Screen ShareThe Verge2025

  Installer No. 95's screen-share segment, in which she recommends a tool for looking through old photos.

  • article: https://www.theverge.com/installer-newsletter/764641/shutter-declutter-pixel-10-pro-fold-samsung-galaxy-buds-3-fe-herdling-installer
  [33]
• Outside LLMs AI & Music hackathon — judgeOutside Lands Festival2025

  Served as a judge for the AI & Music hackathon at Outside Lands, per the event page and her own honors list.

  [18][2]
• My Internet: Jane Manchun WongEmbedded2022-12-22

  with Nick Catucci

  A personal-internet Q&A covering TikTok's Hong Kong exit, Mastodon as a non-replacement, viral posts, and why she cannot quit Twitter.

  • article: https://embedded.substack.com/p/my-internet-jane-manchun-wong
  [11]
• 「拆app達人」黃文津 揭露隱藏功能 推動更善良網絡世界Ming Pao2021-02-07

  Chinese-language feature interview in the Hong Kong daily — her home-press framing of the work.

  • article: https://ol.mingpao.com/ldy/cultureleisure/culture/20210207/1612637829479/%7b%e6%8b%86app%e9%81%94%e4%ba%ba%7d%e9%bb%83%e6%96%87%e6%b4%a5-%e6%8f%ad%e9%9c%b2%e9%9a%b1%e8%97%8f%e5%8a%9f%e8%83%bd-%e6%8e%a8%e5%8b%95%e6%9b%b4%e5%96%84%e8%89%af%e7%b6%b2%e7%b5%a1%e4%b8%96%e7%95%8c
  [14]
• Uses This interviewUses This2020-07-16

  A setup-and-method Q&A: the 2017 MacBook Pro, OnePlus phone, CLI toolchain, and the bug-bounty work alongside feature hunting.

  • article: https://usesthis.com/interviews/jane.manchun.wong/
  [10]
• Jane Manchun Wong: The woman scooping Silicon ValleyBBC News2019-04-27

  with Alli Shultes

  The profile that named the phenomenon: 18-hour weekends, freelance bug bounties, and the ambition to spoil Silicon Valley's scoops.

  [21]
• Inside China Tech: The woman 'scooping' apps and exposing the secrets of Facebook, Twitter and moreSouth China Morning Post (podcast)2018-11-27

  with Zen Soo

  Early audio interview on reverse-engineering apps and what she finds inside them.

  • audio: https://www.scmp.com/podcasts/article/2174995/podcast-woman-scooping-apps-and-exposing-secrets-facebook-twitter-and-more
  [12]
• Q&A with the hacker that scooped Twitter's in-app tipping featureIndie Hackers

  A process Q&A pegged to her Twitter tipping scoop: she traces the work to college-finals curiosity and names bug-bounty hunter Philippe Harewood as an influence.

  [13]

Relations

• Metaemployed by2023-06 – 2024-10-16

  Joined Meta in mid-2023 as a software engineer on Instagram and Threads — announced on Threads' launch day — until the October 16, 2024 reorganization eliminated her role.

  [8][19][35]
• Philippe Harewoodinfluenced by

  She names the bug-bounty hunter as an influence on her app-research work.

  [13]
• Nick Catucciinterviewed by

  Embedded's 'My Internet' interview, December 2022.

  [11]

Claims

• factJane Manchun Wong was born in British Hong Kong in April 1994 (Wikipedia gives April 13, 1994, citing her own birthday post) and grew up in Hong Kong; her Chinese name is 黃文津.[19][20][2]
• factShe recounts that at about age seven she circumvented her parents' controls on the family computer by replacing Windows with Linux — an anecdote repeated in the SCMP, CNN, and Wikipedia accounts of her self-taught beginnings.[19][24][22]
• factShe studied computer science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and left a few months short of graduating because of medical issues — a decision she has said she regrets.[19][27][21]
• factHer first documented discovery came in October 2017, when — as a UMass Dartmouth undergrad — she spotted Facebook testing a LinkedIn-style résumé ('work histories') feature and shared screenshots that surfaced via Matt Navarra; Facebook confirmed the test.[37][19]
• factMIT Technology Review dates her first 'finding' tweet to shortly after midnight on May 4, 2018: 'Twitter is working on End-to-End Encrypted Secret DM!'[27]
• factIn 2018 she published screenshots of Facebook Dating's homepage before its release and revealed a Facebook map feature showing nearby friends' locations.[19][24]
• factOn April 18, 2019 she revealed Instagram was testing hiding like counts; Adam Mosseri confirmed the test about twelve days later.[19][21]
• factHer method is to inspect the publicly shipped code of apps and websites — decompiling mobile builds and reading client-side source for dormant, feature-flagged functionality — then publishing screenshots or mock-ups of what she finds.[19][27][10]
• factHer findings have spanned Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Spotify, Lyft, Uber, Medium, and later non-social targets such as Figma and Waymo.[10][19][5][31]
• factAt her peak she told the BBC she spent up to 18 hours a weekend combing through code, and MIT Technology Review reported stretches of nearly 18 hours a day, alongside paid freelance bug-bounty work.[21][27]
• factBeyond feature findings she worked as a freelance bug-bounty hunter, reporting security flaws to companies before malicious actors could exploit them.[21][10]
• factShe reported a private-API abuse risk in Facebook's unreleased Messenger Rooms through its bug-bounty program before launch and published a write-up of the finding in April 2020.[10][6]
• factCNBC reported in October 2019 that Facebook employees turned to her feed to learn what other teams inside the company were building.[23]
• factOn May 15, 2021 she revealed Twitter's in-development subscription — name (Twitter Blue), price ($2.99/month), and features (Undo Tweets, bookmark Collections) — weeks before Twitter Blue launched in Canada and Australia on June 3, 2021.[28][29]
• factShe revealed Twitter's in-app tipping feature before launch — the scoop that prompted an Indie Hackers Q&A about her process.[13]
• factIn December 2021 she was named to Forbes's 2022 30 Under 30 list in the Social Media category.[17][19][2]
• factHer own honors list includes Tatler Asia's Gen.T Leaders of Tomorrow (Hong Kong, Technology, 2020) and Tatler's Asia's Most Influential (2021).[2]
• factEngineers began addressing her inside the code itself: Business Insider found an Instagram experimental feature named 'What's up Jane,' and Casey Newton told MIT Technology Review that developers leave 'Hi, Jane'-style messages knowing she is coming.[26][27]
• factMIT Technology Review reported an internal Jane Manchun Wong fan club at Meta counting CTO Andrew Bosworth among its members, with a Meta spokesperson saying 'We value her contributions and feedback that help improve our products.'[27]
• factOn April 16, 2022, after Twitter confirmed it was building an edit button, she found code showing the feature would be 'immutable' — creating a new tweet linked to prior versions rather than mutating the original — foreshadowing the shipped edit-history design.[30]
• factShe announced on Threads on July 5, 2023 — the day Threads launched — that she had joined Meta to work on the app; Wikipedia dates the employment from June 2023 and reports she relocated from Hong Kong to San Francisco.[8][19][35]
• factHer hiring was publicly celebrated by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, per TechCrunch's and The Verge's later accounts.[34][35]
• factThreads Web — a product she worked on as a member of the Threads team — won the 2024 Webby Award for Best Mobile User Interface; she lists the win among her honors.[16][2]
• factOn October 16, 2024 she was laid off in a Meta reorganization that cut roles across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs; she posted that her role 'has been impacted.'[34][35][36]
• factIn late 2024 she announced on Threads that she was joining an unnamed startup in Los Angeles as a senior software engineer.[19][9]
• factOn December 23, 2025 she published the complete 1,200-plus-line system prompt for Waymo's unreleased Gemini-powered 'Ride Assistant,' recovered from Waymo's mobile app code — extending her method beyond social apps.[5][32]
• factIn April 2025 she revealed Figma's in-development AI app maker — powered by Anthropic's Claude Sonnet — and a separate 'Figma Sites' website builder, both later covered by The Verge.[31]
• factBy mid-2026 she had built what she calls a 'radar' — a tool continuously scanning public San Francisco permits, business registrations, and health filings for early signs of new openings — and used it to scoop an Animate pop-up in Japantown, chef Stella Wang's restaurant Numb, and the Corgi Cafe's Dogpatch location.[39]
• factA Twitter, Inc. design patent granted by the USPTO in 2023 (USD978895S1) cites her tweeted screenshot of an unreleased feature as prior art — a government record of the evidentiary status her findings acquired.[15][2]
• factHer site lists appearances in three books about the industry she covered: Zoë Schiffer's 'Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter' (2024), Garrett Gee's 'The Hacker Mindset' (2024), and Ron Friedman's 'Decoding Greatness' (2023).[2]
• factShe is now based in San Francisco, after growing up in Hong Kong and a stint in Boston for college.[2][38][39]
• stated beliefShe insists her findings are not leaks: 'Leaks mean that they are based on information coming from employees, that employees are the source. But I use publicly available data and code. They're not leaks.'[27]
• stated beliefShe frames her scoops as pressure toward openness: her goal, she told Forbes, is to 'encourage tech companies to be more open and transparent — to call for making the apps lighter and more secure,' freeing the public from relying on press releases to know where tech is going.[17][27]
• stated beliefShe publishes pre-launch features because apps are used by people who deserve to know what is being worked on behind the scenes — 'And if they had been [transparent] before, I wouldn't have to do this.'[27]
• stated beliefShe describes reverse-engineering as a hobby done for the joy of it — 'I just like to dig deep into the apps and see how they are structured' — comparing the work to solving puzzles.[27][13]
• stated beliefShe says she has wanted to be a software engineer since age six — 'I want to create things' — and told MIT Technology Review the scoop work is not a forever job: 'When I satisfy that curiosity, I'll stop. I'll move on.'[27]
• stated beliefShe has spoken openly about the personal cost of visibility — depression and waves of harassment — telling MIT Technology Review 'I wish more people realized I'm a person. I'm more than a machine,' and telling Embedded that angry users treat her as 'an emotional punching bag' for features she merely reported.[27][11]
• stated beliefAsked in late 2022 what it would take for her to quit Twitter entirely, she said: 'I think Twitter might have to cease to exist in order for me to quit.'[11]
• patternHer findings repeatedly proved out on days-to-weeks timescales: Instagram's hidden like counts were confirmed by Mosseri ~12 days after her post, Twitter Blue launched weeks after her name-and-price scoop, and the edit button shipped with an immutable design matching her code reading.[19][28][30]
• patternHer feed became infrastructure for tech journalism — reporters watch @wongmjane for scoops, outlets cite her by name, and Facebook's own employees reportedly monitored it for news of other teams' work.[21][23][27]
• patternThe industry adapted to her: companies stopped treating in-code features as hidden, left greeting messages for her to find, and at least once named an experiment after her — evidence her presence changed how big apps stage features.[26][27]
• patternHer public feature-finding output largely paused during the Meta years — her blog's dated write-ups jump from 2020 to late 2025 — and resumed at scale only after her layoff, with Figma, Waymo, and San Francisco permit scoops following.[5][31][8][39]
• patternThe same read-the-public-record method keeps generalizing: mobile app code for Waymo and Figma, city permit and registration filings for San Francisco's openings radar.[32][31][39]
• speculationWhether Meta's hire was partly defensive — converting its most reliable leak channel into an engineer — is not resolvable from public sources; the documented record shows only that the company publicly welcomed her and already maintained an internal fan club.[27][34]
• speculationHer Threads bio now lists 'startups' under 'prev,' suggesting the Los Angeles startup role announced in late 2024 may already have ended; no public source confirms her current employer.[4][19]
• speculationHer method depends on companies shipping near-complete features behind flags in public builds; how much further she can take it as companies tighten staging is unknowable — though the 2025 Waymo prompt recovery shows the window is not closed.[27][5]

Sources

1. Jane Manchun Wong — personal sitewongmjane.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
2. About — Jane Manchun Wongwongmjane.com · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   The subject's own biography page; its honors and press lists are self-curated.

3. Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) on XX · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Her primary publication channel for unreleased-feature findings.

4. Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) on ThreadsThreads · subject controlled · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Bio at access time reads 'hacker, writer, engineer, builder — prev: Threads, Instagram, startups'.

5. Waymo Is Working on a Gemini AI Assistant. Here's the System Promptwongmjane.com · 2025 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
6. Messenger Rooms Bug Bounty Write-upwongmjane.com · 2020 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
7. Facebook hides like counts in experiment, toowongmjane.com · 2019 · first person · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
8. Personal News — I've joined Meta to work on Threads, an app built by @instagram!Threads · 2023 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Her own announcement of the Meta hire, posted the day Threads launched.

9. Personal news: I'm joining a startup in Los Angeles as a senior software engineer!Threads · 2024 · first person · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

   Cited by Wikipedia with this date; the post returned unavailable at access time, and Wikipedia's article text says December 2024.

10. Jane Manchun Wong — Engineer, security researcherUses This · 2020 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
11. My Internet: Jane Manchun WongEmbedded · 2022 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
12. Inside China Tech: The woman 'scooping' apps and exposing the secrets of Facebook, Twitter and moreSouth China Morning Post · 2018 · interview · audio · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
13. Q&A with the hacker that scooped Twitter's in-app tipping featureIndie Hackers · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Q&A in which she describes starting app research during college finals and names bug-bounty hunter Philippe Harewood as an influence.

14. 「拆app達人」黃文津 揭露隱藏功能 推動更善良網絡世界Ming Pao · 2021 · interview · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Chinese-language feature interview; listed on the subject's own press page.

15. USD978895S1 — Display screen with graphical user interfaceUSPTO via Google Patents · 2023 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Twitter, Inc. design patent; her tweeted screenshot of an unreleased feature is cited as prior art.

16. Threads Web — Best Mobile User Interface, 2024 Webby AwardsWebby Awards · 2024 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Awarded to the Threads Web product; Wong lists it among her honors as a member of the Threads team.

17. Jane Manchun Wong — Forbes 30 Under 30 profileForbes · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Forbes's official profile for its 2022 30 Under 30: Social Media list, published December 2021.

18. Outside LLMs — AI & Music Hackathon at Outside LandsDevpost · 2025 · primary record · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Hackathon page listing her as a judge.

19. Jane Manchun WongWikipedia · reference · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
20. Jane Manchun Wong (Q63385151)Wikidata · reference · dataset · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
21. Jane Manchun Wong: The woman scooping Silicon ValleyBBC News · 2019 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
22. This 24-year-old finds unreleased features in your favorite appsCNN Business · 2019 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
23. Facebook employees turn to Hong Kong hacker for info on internal projectsCNBC · 2019 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
24. Jane Wong uncovers hidden app features tech giants want to keep secretSouth China Morning Post · 2018 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
25. Meet the 23-year-old engineering detective behind the biggest leaks in techThe Next Web · 2018 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
26. This rogue hacker digs up unreleased features on Instagram, Facebook, and SpotifyBusiness Insider · 2020 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
27. Spilling Silicon Valley's secrets, one tweet at a timeMIT Technology Review · 2022 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
28. Twitter may be working on Twitter Blue, a subscription service that would cost $2.99 per monthThe Verge · 2021 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
29. Twitter mulling paid service called Twitter Blue, finds researcherThe Guardian · 2021 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
30. Twitter's upcoming edit feature may keep track of tweet historyThe Verge · 2022 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
31. Figma is working on an AI app makerThe Verge · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
32. Waymo is testing Gemini as an in-car AI assistant in its robotaxisTechCrunch · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
33. The Verge Installer No. 95 — Screen ShareThe Verge · 2025 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Screen-share feature in which she recommends a photo-browsing tool.

34. Meta lays off employees across multiple teamsTechCrunch · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
35. Meta is laying off employees at WhatsApp, Instagram, and moreThe Verge · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
36. Meta lays off staff at WhatsApp and Instagram to align with 'strategic goals'Associated Press · 2024 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
37. Facebook Is Taking Aim at LinkedIn Again By Testing a Résumé FeatureAdweek · 2017 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z
38. SF 100 List — Jane Manchun WongThe San Francisco Standard · 2025 · reporting · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    SF 100 'The Thinkers' entry: 'she finds big tech's cheat codes, and she's happy to share them.'

39. The Waggle: 'There's a new sleuth in town' (SF openings radar)The San Francisco Standard · 2026 · reporting · article · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    One item in the paper's gossip column reports her permit-scanning 'openings radar' for new San Francisco restaurants and shops.

40. wongmjane.com — Wayback Machine capture, September 28, 2019Internet Archive · 2019 · archive · webpage · accessed 2026-09-17T00:00:00Z

    Capture of her site near the peak of the daily-scoop era, before the Meta years.

Coverage and method

Scope as of

2026-09-17T01:00:00Z

Coverage supplied by the publisher

• biography
• work
• method
• beliefs
• media
• career

Method

public-person-index-v1

Tool

soulscrape

Contributors

• Soulscrape research workflow

Assembled

2026-09-17T01:00:00Z

Human review

No review status or review date is supplied. An assembly timestamp does not establish human review.

Open questions

See the supplied open questions

Open questions

• Her birth year is inconsistent across the record: Wikipedia gives April 13, 1994 (citing her own post), but profiles called her 23 (SCMP/TNW 2018, BBC April 2019), 24 (CNN March 2019), 25 (Business Insider February 2020), and 27 (MIT Technology Review April 2022) — some of those imply 1995–96 births.
• The exact timing and status of her UMass Dartmouth exit are vague — enrolled through at least late 2017, 'taking a break' per the BBC in April 2019, gone 'a few months' before graduating per MIT Technology Review.
• Her Meta job title differs across sources — 'software engineer' in most reporting, 'security engineer' per LinkedIn-derived Business Insider coverage.
• The Los Angeles startup she announced in late 2024 is unnamed; the announcement post is now unavailable, Wikipedia's own date is internally inconsistent (October 24 post vs. 'December 2024' text), and her Threads bio now lists 'startups' under 'prev' — her current employer is unconfirmed.
• Her public scoop output during the Meta tenure is thin in the record; whether she continued private research then, or was bound by employment, is undocumented.
• Whether the San Francisco openings radar will ship as a public app is unresolved — she has said only that she is 'not ruling it out.'
• Non-English profiles (Ming Pao, Les Echos, Frankfurter Allgemeine) are catalogued from her own press list; this index did not fully translate them, so their distinct claims are under-read here.