A data scientist who was fired from Facebook Inc has revealed that the social media company ignored or has been slow to deal with fake acc...
A data scientist who was fired from Facebook Inc has revealed that the social media company ignored or has been slow to deal with fake accounts that have affected elections around the world, including India, BuzzFeed News reported on Monday. Sophie Zhang, who was fired this month, wrote a 6,600-word memo detailing how the platform was used to sway public opinion and manipulate elections.
“In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry,” Zhang, who worked for Facebook’s site integrity fake engagement team, said in her memo.
In India, along with countries like Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, Zhang found politically motivated activity by bots to boost or change outcomes. “I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she added.
The former data scientist said she worked to remove “a politically-sophisticated network of more than a thousand actors working to influence” the Delhi Assembly elections on February 8. Zhang said she “worked through sickness” to remove this, but the social media company never publicly disclosed this network or...
