As Another Employee Turns, Are Facebook's Days Numbered?

Written By BlabberBuzz | Wednesday, 13 October 2021 04:45 PM
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Another Facebook whistleblower says she is ready to testify before Congress about her former employer — and claims she’s presented papers revealing “potential criminal violations” to a vague US law enforcement agency.

Sophie Zhang, who worked as a data scientist at the social media giant for nearly three years before she was fired last fall, tweeted Tuesday that she was prepared to testify about Facebook to meet her “civic duty.”

“If Congress wishes for me to testify, I will fulfill my civic duty, as I’ve publicly stated for the past half year. Last year, I testified privately before a European Parliamentary committee though I was avoiding press. My duty to democracy comes first,” Zhang wrote.

Zhang added she had already barely given law enforcement “detailed documentation regarding potential criminal violations” and perceived that an investigation into Facebook was still ongoing.

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In an interview with CNN, Zhang declined to say what information she handed over and to which agency.

The FBI would not say anything on whether Zhang had given it anything about Facebook.

Zhang’s vow to testify comes after fellow whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked internal Facebook studies to lawmakers and the Wall Street Journal, pressed lawmakers to fix the tech giant during US Senate testimony last week.

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Haugen claimed the company downplayed Instagram’s adverse effects on teens’ mental health, released popular users from content rules, and failed to crack down on drug cartels and human traffickers.

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Zhang told CNN she was encouraged by the bipartisan support to protect children online following Haugen’s testimony.

On the day she was terminated, Zhang posted a 7,800-word memo to Facebook’s internal forum accusing the social media giant of not doing enough to stop hate and misinformation.

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Zhang explained what she said as evidence showing how foreign governments used fake social media accounts to influence the public or manipulate public opinion.

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She claimed Facebook didn’t take her findings seriously.

“I have blood on my hands,” Zhang wrote in the memo.

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Facebook sought to diminish her findings, issuing a statement saying “we fundamentally disagree with Ms Zhang’s characterization of our priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform.”

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“As part of our crackdown against this kind of abuse, we have specialized teams focused on this work and have already taken down more than 150 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior. Around half of them were domestic networks that operated in Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, and in the Asia Pacific region,” the Facebook statement said.

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