Sophie Zhang is now the second whistleblower who, as former employees of Facebook, have come out and accused the social media giant of intentionally doing nothing to rein in malicious use of its platform.
Facebook hired Sophie Zhang to monitor fake accounts, but what she found was far more sinister. Zhang discovered that dictators around the world were setting up fake accounts and using them to manipulate their citizens.
Zhang quickly made her findings known to her superiors but says they were too slow to act to stop those malicious uses.
In fact, Zhang’s superior Guy Rosen responded in part to her saying “we prioritize stopping the most urgent and harmful threats globally (and) fake likes is not one of them.”
But Zhang in an interview with CNN insisted that what she submitted were not just fake likes. And like her predecessor Frances Haugen who also came out and accused Facebook of placing profits ahead of reining in malicious use, Zhang felt like she was threated as a low level employee who knew little about running a business.
In the end Facebook fired Zhang last year and offered her $64,000 to sign a non-disparagement agreement, but she refused the offer.
After her termination, Zhang wrote a 7,800-word memo detailing how she felt Facebook had ignored her concerns, posted it on her Facebook page, and also on her personal web page.
Facebook not only took down her posting on their platform, the media giant went further and leaned on Zhang’s web hosting company to take her website down entirely claiming her memo contained proprietary information.
Facebook justified its action pointing to its record of taking down information across the board that it feels are harmful.
DNT News, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
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