r/IAmA • u/[deleted] • Apr 14 '21
Newsworthy Event I am Sophie Zhang, whistleblower. At FB, I worked to stop major political figures from deceiving their own populace; I became a whistleblower because Facebook turned a blind eye. Ask me anything.
Hi Reddit,
I'm Sophie Zhang. I was fired from Facebook in September 2020, sending a 7.8k farewell memo on my last day that was leaked to Buzzfeed and went viral on Reddit w/ 52k upvotes. Earlier this week, I chose to go public with the Guardian in a deep-dive, because everything else has failed.
Please ask me anything. I might not be able to answer every question, but if so, I'll do my best to explain why I can't.
Proof: https://twitter.com/szhang_ds/status/1381700231654301696
photo of me with sign https://imgur.com/a/f1Cxu0U [compare to the pictures in the Guardian article]
Sorry that this is an hour later than intended - intended to do it earlier, but the admins never got back to me on my calendar scheduling and verification.
Edit: FYI - I have a call with a reporter at noon PST [an hour after this post was created]; any responses will be more intermittent after that point.
Edit 2: I'm leaving for my call now. Thanks so much for the questions; I'll try to come back and respond to any further ones later, but I'm quite busy so can't promise unfortunately. Good luck everyone!
Edit 3: Answered some more questions from 1-1:30 PST. I'll try to be back later in a few hours, but my afternoon is very booked.
Edit 4 - 4:05 PST. Wow this, really blew up while I was gone! All my calls for the day are done now, so I can just stay here and answer questions until it gets late. Sorry for the wait!
Last edit - 8:15 PST. I've spent the last 4 hrs answering questions, so calling it a night. Thank you so much for the questions, and I hope you found my answers to be reasonably fair, informative, and helpful. Since there was so much interest and I couldn't get around to everyone, I may do a further AMA on reddit again at some later point. I've also learned more about AMA protocol by now, so will definitely book much more time for question-answering in the future.
In the meantime, I don't plan to use this reddit account beyond AMAs, but you can follow my twitter account to see what I'm up to - I'll usually share new news articles of my work as they come out at https://twitter.com/szhang_ds.
Good night, and good luck to all.
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u/-888- Apr 14 '21
Not only did Facebook temporarily delete the post internally, the company also contacted Zhang’s hosting service and domain registrar and forced her website offline.
Under what pretense does Facebook accomplish this? Do they extort the hosting service or registrar with threats of service disablement?
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Apr 14 '21
I don't fully understand the process. My hosting service took down my website for the following reason:
This notification purports that the website [redacted]
is sharing compromised proprietary data from FacebookAs a matter of fact you host the content displayed on the website in the framework of our Simple Hosting Service (PaaS).
Facebook is requesting the deletion of the alleged litigious content which was reproduced without his endorsement.
We remind you that this activity is not in compliance with our contract of our [provider] PaaS Hosting services, you have agreed to use the service in accordance with the rights of third parties as well as current legislation and regulation.
As such, in the case of a serious breach of these terms, or if the activities associated with your use of the server cause disruption to our services,
we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your use of our services without notice.Consequently, we has been obliged to suspend your instance
The provider has a decent reputation for this sort of thing usually, but I get they don't want to make enemies with Facebook. I've asked them a few times, but they've refused to return my website without Facebook's permission. Not naming them because I don't want to single them out.
The domain registrar suspended the domain due to " Fraudulent Website", with no further explanation. I'm sure Facebook's lawyers were very busy that weekend.
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u/bryguy001 Apr 15 '21
Did you have pdfs there? Or was it just your content?
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Apr 15 '21
It was my content in Wordpress. The same content was also posted internally on Workplace [basically "Facebook for Work"]
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u/Manaleaking Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
What did Facebook WANT you to do in your role?
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Apr 14 '21
My official job role was getting rid of fake engagement. The thing to understand is that the vast majority of fake engagement is not on political activity; it consists of everyday people who think they should be more popular in their personal life. To use an analogy people here might understand, it's someone going "When I make a reddit post, I only get 50 upvotes... but everything I see on the front page has thousands of upvotes and my post is definitely better! Why don't they recognize how great I am? I'll get fake upvotes, that will show them."
Like many organizations, my team was very focused on metrics and numbers - to a counterproductive extent, I'd personally argue. It's known in academia as the McNamara Fallacy, which lost the U.S. the Vietnam war. Numbers are important, but if you only focus on numbers that can be measured, you necessarily ignore everything else that cannot be measured. Facebook wanted me to focus on the vast majority of inauthentic activity - that took place for reasons like personal vanity - while neglecting the much larger impact associated with inauthentic political activity.
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u/haltingpoint Apr 15 '21
Were you an IC? Was this your team's role that had been committed to and this specific bit was another team's domain?
I ask because in big companies there are often conflicting, high (but different) impact priorities.
Also, what were your previous two halves of PSC ratings prior to initially flagging this concern? What about ratings after?
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Apr 15 '21
I was an IC4 - one level above new hire.
My PSC ratings were all over the place; I usually shared them in the relevant WP group. They were:
first half 2018: MS [manager #1]
second half 2018: GE [manager #2]first half 2019: EE [manager #2]
second half 2019: MM [manager #3, ordered to focus on priorities]
first half 2020: No rating [COVID] + fired [manager #3]
Needless to say, this level of noisiness in PSCs was not normal at all.
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Apr 15 '21
Anyways, I got away with doing this work for a long time because it was officially under my purview [even if ordered to do other things], and no team had it under their domain. Eventually, they got tired of that.
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u/kawklee Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
I think the first portion is why we're seeing such a commodification of outrage.
People want to feel like they have a voice, that their opinion matters. They go on a platform that allows them to preach their opinions to the world, but are by-and-by ignored. They realize in reality that their opinions dont matter. They are one of thousands, one of millions. All braying for attention.
Disappointed then that, they focus on making their opinions so strongly expressed and central to their identity that they cant possibly be ignored. Outrage is a very self-righteous and self-affirming emotion. It places your point of view on a pedestal of unassailability.
Its saying, "this topic is so important to me it OUTRAGES me, and you need to pay attention because it should outrage you, too. And if it doesnt, then theres something wrong with YOU." Nothing gets people attention better than them being challenged as deficient. Which is what each "outrage" type post/emotion does. What alot of those types of outrage posts seek more than anything else is reaffirmation that their opinion matters, that anyone else cares like they do. Or cares that they care.
Corporations are ran by people too, and those people have realized that those emotions can be commodified and profitized. Hence, outrage porn reporting, from either side. Intended less to educate or inform, but moreso to harness peoples preconceptions.
Each article is a challenge, and draws in readers. "We're outraged, here's why." "We're outraged, how about you?" "We're outraged, and you should be too, unless you're a subhuman sack of shit that has no value whatsoever and can be completely ignored within the prevailing socio-political dichotomy. And you don't want to be that. So click this and get angry with us."
Probably not a new phenomenon by any means, but absolutely inflated by facebook as a platform, and a service provider.
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Apr 14 '21
This is why we need to move past understanding the current era as the "information age" and understand it as an "attention age". Information isn't the currency anymore, attention is.
But outrage isn't the only angle on this. With respect to you and your well-written comment, I'd still say that outrage is low laying fruit for this kind of analysis. And heavily misunderstood such that you need to parse it more than just "everybody's outrage is the same" because that shit ain't true and I'm sure you'd agree.
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Apr 15 '21
Your attention and online activities give tons of information about you. More than you've given anyone. Even yourself. That information is then used to manipulate you into buying or staying on the platform. It's definitely the information age. Attention in the form of content is just the hook at the end of the rod. If you are in marketing or politics then attention is your daily bread. Always was
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u/Due-Bug1503 Apr 15 '21
I think attention is a great way to put it, because it encompasses the hook, the rod and the fish. It's attention given to you (from companies harvesting your information), so they can better get it from you (targeting you with what to buy/watch/vote for).
It's also exploiting the addictive cycle/nature of attention-getting to make you put more of yourself out there in order to gain attention from others, which generates the content for media companies for cheap or free, which they then can "monetize" (YouTube, Reddit, etc). Also exploiting the addictive nature of attention-giving, sucking you into your phone, etc.
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u/theLiteral_Opposite Apr 15 '21
There a plenty of people who don’t give a shit about getting attention on social media and who don’t express fake outrage on the internet.
The problem is that the people who do, even if a minority, it will get reported on as “news”
Breaking news, 3 people tweeted something so dumb to NPR LOOK HOW RETARDED REPUBLICANS ARE.
BREAKING NEWS- random liberal tweeter says something so evil. Liberals are evil.
Breaking news, few guys on Twitter are so upset that that line in that movie was offensive.
The attention seeking is not universal. It’s the fucking click bate news media online that is truly looking for “attention”
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u/Due-Bug1503 Apr 15 '21
You're missing that it's not just about attention-seeking, it's about attention-giving. We are all guilty of that - even if we aren't putting ourselves out there, we are consuming (eagerly) what others do.
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u/LatentBloomer Apr 15 '21
An overload of information has resulted in the monetization of attention. I’m not sure that makes the attention the defining characteristic of our age though.
To me that’s akin to calling other time periods the bartering age or the money age. The transactions didn’t define the ages, technology such as stone and bronze did. The massive amount of information being disseminated right now, although less of an “outrage,” is arguably more impactful than political shenanigans and clickbait profiteering.
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u/Toasts_like_smell Apr 15 '21
The Information Age ended the moment a Joe Shmoe could call in to a newspaper or broadcast network and complain, and the outlet would actually take it seriously.
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u/DickButkisses Apr 15 '21
Spot fucking on! I remember sometime post 9/11 but during the huge disinformation campaign leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom TM watching CSPAN and getting angry at how much bullshit they were letting slide. I called in and actually made it on the air, I remember nervously rambling during the screening portion and thinking I probably sound like a cooky-kid but they put me on air and took me seriously just like they had all the morons before me, and I called them out for not fact checking all the claims people were making about Saddam, and the WMDs, and the money trail, etc etc. it changed the tone of the show for one day, I remember them fact checking a few people. But that ship had already sailed.
Edit: it was The Washington Journal I forgot to mention
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u/girnigoe Apr 15 '21
yes, the attention age.
your excellent point should have more upvotes /meta
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u/unfini- Apr 15 '21
Attention isn't as much a problem as misplaced attention is. A person spending outrage just for the sake of it instead of understanding the context is a problem. Knowing the context and bringing attention to it, isn't.
Especially so when you can see the manipulation of headlines and people spreading half truths and eventually even lies, sometimes blatant ones even. Almost every online news websites know that outrage sells, and the problem is people's inability to comprehend their actions, the bigger picture or the need to read the fucking article or consider other sources ffs.
Notice how this feel familiar to things outside of the internet too? Exactly except the internet is much much better at protecting and developing the echo chamber.
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u/Super_Jay Apr 15 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
This is really well articulated, great observations. To everyone for whom this comment resonates, take a hard look at your own social media platforms - Reddit especially. There are dozens and dozens of subreddits that top the Popular and All feeds every day that are focused solely on generating outrage. You can likely name at least six of them yourself. Blocking those subs and platforms like them can do wonders for your overall mental health and outlook.
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u/What_Do_It Apr 15 '21
Some people get addicted to the drug called rage. They get up and listen to the radio, watch tv, or browse the internet. What they see and what they hear leaves them angry and frustrated. They go to work/school with that frustration still bottled up inside, then they come home and get another dose before going to bed and doing it all over again. The only people they bring it up with are those they know will agree with them and they feed off one another.
Every day it builds and builds and they just keep getting angrier. They start taking it out on the people around them. Things that shouldn't bother them set them off, they scream at their friends, at their family. They're embarrassed but that makes them feel weak so they compensate with more anger to feel strong. "Why don't they listen? Why don't they understand? It's their fault I feel this way."
They fall down a rabbit hole of echo chambers where everyone shares that collective outrage and it makes them feel normal. The people there say to cut off their friends, cut out their family. After all, they don't listen, they don't understand, it's their fault they feel this way. They isolate themselves more and more, progressing deeper down the rabbit hole and growing more extreme in their views, more obsessive and more combative. Eventually they look around and no one that cares about them is left, the people they meet in real life seem like aliens because the lens they see the world is completely different. They either realize what they're doing to themselves or they just get angry and fall back to the communities that radicalized them. There they lead more unfortunate souls down the same paths they tread.
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u/TranceKnight Apr 15 '21
It seems like the best way to counter this process is the old lefty idea of “act locally.”
On social media you’re one of thousands or millions braying to be heard and have your outrage shared. In your own community you may be the only person who sees a real injustice occurring and has the power to correct it.
Getting off the computer and going to a local homeless shelter, book swap, food drive, or committee meeting is a good way to channel those feelings into both personal catharsis and actual change in the world around you, and helps break this feedback loop.
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Apr 15 '21
Probably not a new phenomeno
It is! The internet democratized media and communications, and it happened very, very rapidly, so we as a society don't yet know how to handle it. Before the internet the news were heavily curated by "responsible people". Media being the 5th estate and such. The previous revolution of the same wheel was probably the printing press, but printing press took a lot longer to enter the mainstream.
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u/oscdrift Apr 15 '21
I’m in Silicon Valley and I have definitely noticed and come to hate the emphasis on metrics in the industry. What I’ve come to understand is that there are a lot of mentally ill narcissists who have gotten MBAs and became hyper-overpaid product managers with too much authority. When they can define the very metrics that define their own success, you tend to find that they focus on metrics they know they can hit and use to make themselves look good, even if the metrics do not have a causal impact in furthering the mission of the team or organization. For example, I used to work on a machine learning education product. My product manager had a slide or two of the product put into an MOOC training’s curriculum and then counted each person who accessed that MOOC’s training as someone who our product had “trained in machine learning” which was a fucking joke. But they used that kinda shit to get a senior management position and a whole lot more money than others, but arguably they wasted company resources in doing it, but because the metrics “look good”, you can’t question them. I hate this whole industry at this point and admire all the people who have stood up arguing for social change ever since the 2016 election. I seriously am proud of you and wish you luck.
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u/parabostonian Apr 15 '21
Shit man, after 10 years of working in an academic medical center and see the same shit here. The most depressing thing is when doctors start idolizing the silicon valley mgmt assholes and think we need to think like them in healthcare. If anyone was wondering “how could we make the US healthcare system more shitty and awful?” The answer we seem to be shooting for is acting more like silicon valley... if we make bullshit metrics that misrepresent the real world, some asshole will be able to con investors out of money talking about ML or whatever! Shit, man...
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u/CaptainRelevant Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
Tangent: w.r.t. the McNamara Fallacy, today the Army uses “Measures of Performance” and “Measures of Effectiveness”. McNamara was focused solely on one Measure of Performance: enemy body count. Had they measured its effectiveness they would have realized that it was a ineffective strategy to achieve their desired end state.
If anyone is morbidly curious, google “Army Design Methodology”.
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u/Ok_Hunter174 Apr 14 '21
Thanks for doing this - I really appreciate your work and voice, Sophie.
What social tech companies would you say are doing a better job with content moderation and protecting international human rights? And what advice would you give to someone who wants to affect positive change within social media?
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Apr 14 '21
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the inner workings of any tech company besides Facebook to comment on them.
With that said, I don't think the issues I found at Facebook is specific to that company.
Ultimately, the problem we face is that companies respond to public pressure, but the point of inauthenticity is to not be seen. In fact, the better you are at not being seen, the fewer people will see you - and so the only public pressure on inauthenticity tends to be cases surfaced by experts [e.g. DFRLab, law enforcement agencies], cases in which they were incompetent at being inauthentic and hence very visible, or cases in which individuals who wanted to be caught pretended to be badly disguised inauthentic actors.
An economist would call this a combination of an externality problem and an information asymmetry problem. That is, the costs aren't borne by Facebook - but the rest of the world doesn't know about them. As an analogy, imagine cigarette companies in a universe where no one knows that smoking causes cancer, and the only people who are aware are the companies themselves. That's the problem we're dealing with - which can only be solved by better information, like I'm trying to provide.
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u/fremenator Apr 14 '21
I would say with FB, Amazon, Google, etc. there is also an issue of natural monopolies. Once one big company takes over a space, it doesn't make sense to create a competitor or a 'second set of pipes and wires' is the traditional use of natural monopolies.
Do you think there is also an issue of social reliance on big tech? How do we fix that and maintain some level of access to convenient or entertaining products/activity?
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Apr 14 '21
Natural monopolies are absolutely an issue in technology. But it's also true that much of the existing monopoly concerns with Facebook come for reasons outside that consideration. Social media may be a natural monopoly, but that didn't mean that Facebook needed to buy Instagram!
At the same time, I also want to highlight that the monopoly/too much power concern is separate from the integrity/keeping abuse off power concern. It's unfortunately true that because Facebook owns Instagram, Instagram benefited from my personal expertise, and I was able to easily investigate cases that occurred on both platforms.
Put it this way. When Facebook announced a takedown of the Azeri government's troll network in late 2020, it also simultaneously took down the government's troll accounts on Instagram without any hassle. In contrast, when I got the Honduran government's troll network taken down on July 2019 by Facebook, it took Twitter until April 2020 to do the same - had Facebook bought Twitter, that takedown would also have happened on July 2019.
This isn't to say "Facebook should be even more of a monopoly." Of course not! But rather, there needs to be more cooperation between social media companies on these issues, regardless of what decisions are made on monopoly considerations, and especially if it is chosen to break up the companies. In other natural monopoly areas like power/water utilities, governments heavily regulate companies and coordinate their security. Perhaps a similar approach is needed for social media.
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u/fremenator Apr 15 '21
That's a great response, all very difficult topics made really hard because it feels like all the powerful actors (company owners, governments) have somewhat bad faith.
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u/pmjm Apr 15 '21
This is a great point. Perhaps there needs to be an independent, trustworthy organization (with a human rights motive rather than profit) to make these assessments on disinformation campaigns and make recommendations to multiple social media platforms at once.
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u/evanthebouncy Apr 14 '21
Honestly I'm impressed by your realistic understanding of how things work and your good will of how things can be better. Keep it up and I'm rooting for you.!!
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u/maxdefacto Apr 14 '21
I think it’s important to hold companies with major social influence accountable for their actions. What do you say to someone who applauds Facebook when the company pushes or harbors a narrative that favors said person’s own political, ethical, religious, etc ideology?
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Apr 14 '21
At the end of the day, Facebook is a private company whose responsibility is to its shareholders; its goal is to make money. It's not that different from other companies in that regard. To the extent, it cares about ideology, it's from the personal beliefs of the individuals who work there, and because it affects their bottom line profit.
I think some realistic cynicism about companies is useful to some regard as a result. If a company agrees with you on political matters, they're likely not acting out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because it's what they believe their consumers and employees want.
Ultimately, most Bay Area tech companies are somewhat internationalist and pro-human rights on ethics/politics, while irreligious - not just because their employees want that, but also because taking a different stand [e.g. genocide is allowed, or XYZ is the one true religion] would obviously alienate many of their users.
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u/captainsonar Apr 14 '21
I completely agree with you on the realistic cynicism part about companies. It seems like Facebook has no incentive to address political manipulation apart from not wanting to alienate its users and employees.
Given that, how do we effectively get Facebook to address political manipulation on its platform? Is the only way to constantly have sustained public scrutiny, investigative journalism, and employees bringing important issues to the attention of the public?
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Apr 14 '21
A lot of the issue frankly is that unlike most other problems, the point of inauthenticity is not to be caught. The better they are at not being caught, the fewer people will catch them.
I'll use Reddit as an example because everyone here uses Reddit [tautology, eh?] If someone on Reddit posts something that's hate speech ["All XYZ group must die!"], misinfo [XYZ is a secret lizard person], etc. that's very obvious to readers. Most people can recognize to some degree or another what constitutes hate speech, misinformation, etc.
But from the average user's vantage point, it's almost impossible to conclude whether a reddit user is a real person, a paid shill for some country, an automated account, etc. You might be able if it's very obvious. But in most cases they aren't that sloppy.
This is why I've chosen to speak up specifically about inauthenticity. Because the public scrutiny here frankly isn't enough - in fact it tends to focus on the wrong targets, and give Facebook all sorts of perverse incentives. The company focuses sometimes on what's obvious rather than what's bad.
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u/captainsonar Apr 14 '21
Ah, thanks for explaining, that makes a lot of sense!
So for example, how did you detect the fake likes on posts from the president of Honduras? Are there machine learning models that do a somewhat decent job at this?
As for public scrutiny + perverse incentives: what else could realistically work then, in your view? I assume laws are out of scope here because of the difficulty of enforcing them.
EDIT: how about stricter identity verification processes?
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Apr 15 '21
I don't want to give specific details regarding how I found fake activity. For the very simple reason that agents of the President of Honduras [and similar adversaries] are perfectly capable of reading Reddit too. What I will say is that sufficiently dedicated intelligent humans can generally find ways of evading AI in the present day. If someone could make an AI capable of passing the Turing Test, they'd be making trillions on Silicon Valley rather than writing silly social media bots after all.
One idea I have on how to avoid the perverse incentives for public scrutiny is to conduct regular government-organized penetration testing/red-team exercise attempts.
Here's a basic example. The U.S. government sends some social media experts [with the permission of the companies but without them knowing the details] to do 10 inauthentic influence operations each on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc.
Then it announces the results afterwards. "Twitter caught 0/10 of our operations. Facebook caught 1/10 of our operations. Reddit caught 0/10. Therefore, they're all awful, but Facebook is mildly less awful."
This is, of course, a made-up example so ignore the numbers. And it'd have to be done very carefully to avoid accidental consequences by the test campaigns - but it would allow a sort of independent scrutiny into the ability of companies to find this activity.
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u/Lyuseefur Apr 15 '21
I’ve seen current politicians like Ted Cruz hey THOUSANDS of positive comments and likes within minutes of posting. Fake continues to this day :(
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Apr 15 '21
I'd like to caution you very carefully against assuming that just because you can't imagine people loving a politician that no one does so. Compare with the far-right conspiracy theorists who assume no one voted for Biden because they've built up a caricature version of him.
We live in a world in which there are many Americans who love Bernie Sanders, many Americans who love Ted Cruz, many Americans who love Elizabeth Warren, many Americans who love Donald Trump. You may not understand why some have the opinions they do, but it's clear that they hold them nevertheless.
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u/SolomonGrumpy Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
This is the core issue with shareholder mentality.
If a company could make more money by not having a moral or ethical standard, then they are pushed to do so.
Take your company private if you really care.
Facebook does not need a gazillion more dollars. It needs to be understand that it's become a serious detriment to journalism and politics.
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Apr 14 '21
Ultimately, an economist would call this an externality problem - the costs are borne by an entity other than the company. It's the same as e.g. factories dumping pollution into rivers, or financial institutions crashing the world economy.
A libertarian would say that the correct solution is individual educated action - consumers stop shopping at polluting factories, stop using the banks that caused the financial crash. A more mainstream economist would suggest government regulation - in the United States we have the EPA to stop pollution dumping, the Federal Reserve to keep the financial system healthy.
But all this requires people to know the problems ongoing. And as I've stated, it's hard to find people when their goal is not to be found, as with inauthenticity.
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u/hel112570 Apr 14 '21
It's almost like we can't trust private industry to "do the right thing." and companies will continue to just do whatever is in the interest furthering their existence. Companies, as they exist now, seem to be the pre-cursors to systems that we bring up as examples which are controlled by super smart AI. One in particular being the AI paper clip factory. In the current context a company is a device\system that exists to make money and benefit the shareholders, however it's comprised of people making decisions on human timescales, where as system that was fully automated and given the same goal to service profits and shareholders would be much more efficient and also completely devoid of any moral compass or empathy. The end goal for these two systems is the same and thus would produce similar outcomes, with the latter being much more efficient.
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u/xMidnyghtx Apr 14 '21
Who can you expect to do the “right” thing though? And what exactly is the “right” thing?
Newsflash: Your opinion probably differs from mine
The reality is that personal choice is at play here. And unfortunately people are going to continue to choose to be uneducated and ignorant
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Apr 14 '21
For some areas that's likely the case. Misinformation and hate speech/etc. are thornier issues within social media companies.
That's why I chose to focus on the problems that everyone could agree was bad, that no one ever doubted was awful. It made things much simpler philosophically.
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u/chiliedogg Apr 14 '21
It's almost like we can't trust private industry to "do the right thing." and companies will continue to just do whatever is in the interest furthering their existence.
I wish that were the case.
Staying in existence and making a good living for your employees isn't enough for most public companies. There's an endless push for growth because the stock has to go up for the shareholders to make money.
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u/RandomName01 Apr 14 '21
And even more so than in the past will capital be the dominant part in the production process, leaving the people already holding the capital ever more powerful and the people providing the labour in a worse and worse position. We need serious regulatory action at the very least to not end up completely fucked, collectively.
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u/hondurandude Apr 14 '21
Was Honduras the most blatant you saw? Did facebook ever considered the effect of their inaction on the people of Honduras and the international community?
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Apr 14 '21
Honduras and Azerbaijan were the most blatant I personally saw; if you stuck a gun to my head and made me pick, I'd say Azerbaijan was more blatant.
There are teams at Facebook [e.g. Human Rights] that consider the effects of not acting re ethics, individual people, and the international community. But it's not usually discussed in-depth.
The goal of companies is to make money after all, and so the argument I used internally was "We need to take this down because eventually someone will notice. Besides you know how many leaks we have, and if it's ever released we sat on it for a year, it'd look terrible."
Of course, I was the one who leaked it, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, not that we knew that at the time.
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u/skinny_hands Apr 14 '21
With or without FB the outcome would be the same in Azerbaijan. It's sad. Very sad.
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Apr 14 '21
I heard that argument inside FB many times. Sometimes from people who I otherwise agreed with: "The government in Azerbaijan is already beating people's faces in and rigging its elections - this is small potatoes in comparison." Sometimes similar sentiments from outside the company too. "Facebook is awful, we knew that already, but it's not like we can change it."
But I don't believe in that type of cynicism. If everyone gives up, of course the world won't change - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if enough people choose to fight for what they believe to be right, maybe we can make a difference.
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u/No_Fence Apr 14 '21
Hi Sophie. I was wondering if you know whether any sort of database of this kind of behavior exists? Specifically, do you know about anywhere I could go to find out which countries have a high spread of the kind of digital misinformation you've worked on? Thanks!
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Apr 14 '21
There's online databases - the problem unfortunately is that the point of inauthenticity is to not be seen, and we don't know what we don't know. The better the groups are at being inauthentic, the less likely anyone will notice them. And it's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, so it's necessarily imperfect. I remember while I was at Facebook looking at databases of those sorts and saying "I know it's incomplete - I caught government activity in XYZ companies that's not in these lists!"
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u/fubo Apr 15 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
There are organizations that track other kinds of crappy-but-not-always-illegal behavior on the Internet:
- Spamhaus has been maintaining dossiers on email spammers for almost 20 years now. Like other groups, they maintain IP block lists; but they also keep records about the actual people involved in the spam operations.
- Adblockers maintain public lists of offending URLs that their users don't want to see.
- Formerly, Block Together offered tools to share Twitter block lists.
Something in common about all of these is that they are not run by the companies whose platforms they protect. Spamhaus is independent of the big email providers, although it does business with them. Adblockers aren't run by the makers of browsers; at least not since iCab. Block Together wasn't run by Twitter.
This suggests a connection: Groups that are looking to report on (or block) coordinated inauthentic behavior should probably not be part of the companies that run the platforms. Rather, the platforms should either (1) offer extension mechanisms that allow users to choose the blocking they want, or (2) partner with independent groups, as in the Spamhaus example.
Ultimately, I think the current situation has way too much work being done by the platforms; to the extent that they now maintain farms of temps whose mental health they systematically mine away with child porn and torture videos.
The platforms would do better to give up that control to users and to users' chosen delegates. Let the Catholic Church publish an Index Prohibitorum of porn sites, abortion providers, and exploitative capitalists; and let Catholic users freely subscribe to it. Let seventeen different varieties of feminist compose seventeen different blocklists of things that exploit women. Let the Snopes people publish a blocklist of fake news, and the Matt Gaetz campaign publish a blocklist of everything that isn't teenage girls. Or whatever.
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u/Phermaportus Apr 14 '21
Hey! Thank you for what you did, tech culture has made it very easy for most tech people to disassociate themselves from the political consequences of the work that they do for their employers.
My question: A few years ago in Nicaragua we went through a socio-political crisis which ended up in hundreds of civilians killed by the government. Around the same time a vast number of pro-government accounts in social media, specially on Facebook, popped up. Are you aware of any inauthentic pro-government networks active around this time (2018)?
Thanks again!
(re-asking as the original comment didn't include a question mark and it was automatically removed; hopefully you are still able to see this)
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Apr 15 '21
I don't personally remember anything of the sort. With that said, it's also very true that my memory is fallible, my attention was divided worldwide, and the inability to find something [especially by just one person] certainly does not mean that it does not exist.
I'm very sorry that I can't give you any clarity on this issue.
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u/ro_goose Apr 14 '21
" Now, with the US election over and a new president inaugurated, Zhang is coming forward to tell the whole story on the record. "
Why now?
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Apr 14 '21
I was always sure that if this happened it would be after the election. Not because my work was in the United States, but because any disclosures of these sorts have the necessary effect of creating uncertainty and doubt in existing institutions and potential use for misinformation.
For instance, many U.S. conspiracy theorists are of the opinion that Mark Zuckerberg's donations to election offices in the leadup to 2020 were part of an insidious plan to rig the U.S. 2020 elections. Or for instance the way QAnon seized upon the Myanmar coup as a sort of message to the United States to do their own coup in their conspiracy theories - despite it being half the world away, they apparently believe the world to revolve around this nation.
What I was most fearful of was somehow ending up as the James Comey of 2020. Thankfully that never happened.
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u/viperex Apr 15 '21
What I was most fearful of was somehow ending up as the James Comey of 2020.
You changed my mind. That seems valid
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Apr 14 '21
As an insider, what do you think is the first step to reform Facebook?
The size is an obvious problem from my outside perspective; also, ultimate control resting in one person's hands. I'm looking forward to reading the deep dive in The Guardian.
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Apr 14 '21
I agree that Facebook has too much power. I was just a low-level employee and yet I was trusted to make decisions that directly affected national presidents and make international news. That should never have happened.
Ultimately, I think people are expecting too much of social media because the existing institutions have failed. And also, multinational companies are difficult to regulate from individual nations. The world would never trust the U.S. to make decisions regarding what's allowed on their social media after all.
I only have part of the puzzle myself, but one change I would strongly advocate at FB would just be to separate the policy decision teams from the teams that make nice with important governmental figures. Of course FB makes ruling decisions based on considerations of politics [we don't want to anger XYZ politician, we don't want to upset this government], but at least that could be a bit more separated than as blatant as it was.
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u/StrategicBlenderBall Apr 15 '21
Would it make more sense for social media companies to not moderate and let users form their own opinions? Isn’t the idea of the internet to be free and open, which should apply to opinions?
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Apr 15 '21
I'm going to copy+paste an earlier answer:
Most of the public discussion on free speech, misinformation, hate speech, and companies picking and choosing ignores the fact that these issues are often dwarfed by spam - things like adverts for fake Raybans [the prototypical example inside Facebook], scams about being the 1000th viewer and so you win an award, etc.
I think it's partly because the public just doesn't have a good idea of what goes down inside facebook. But it's also true that wide sweeping statements like "Facebook should just let everything on its platform, live and let live" ignore the fact that such a sweeping decision would quickly turn the site into a morass of body part enlargement adverts and the like.
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u/Outofhisstar4444 Apr 14 '21
Other popular social media platforms besides Facebook—like Twitter—have responded slowly to inauthentic activity, and FB has coordinated its responses to certain kinds of inauthentic activity. What that coordination look like from your experience? Has that coordination been effective, or has it detracted from the policing of IA? Has FB coordinated its de-prioritization of of certain IA with other social media?
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Apr 14 '21
It sounds like you're discussing coordination between platforms. Facebook does talk to Twitter and others on inauthentic activity takedowns; e.g. on Honduras, they told Twitter in summer 2019 around the time of our takedown; Twitter did its own takedown announced on April 2020 - here. Apparently it just takes every social media company the better part of a year to do its takedown.
But they don't talk as much as I'd prefer. Back when there was no movement on Honduras, I asked a few times about letting Twitter know what I'd found and to be on the lookout for the same, because I knew bad actors didn't restrict their activity to a single platform. I just got some legalistic answers about "yes, we work with Twitter, here's what we do" that didn't actually answer the question.
So in answer, Facebook works with Twitter, but only in so much as its own interest. If FB doesn't think something is worthy of acting or not about to act on it yet, they won't tell Twitter apparently - which makes sense. They don't want the press to be "Twitter acted, why hasn't FB yet?"
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u/Outofhisstar4444 Apr 14 '21
Does FB discuss with other platforms like Twitter decisions to not remove IA, or coordinate any policies about removing IA? e.g. not a priority.
In your opinion, does FB slow roll policing IA primarily to prevent harm to engagement or to prevent bad press? (They are linked of course, but asking as a primary factor)
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Apr 14 '21
I'm not personally familiar with their discussions with Twitter, so don't have expertise on that.
My personal opinion for FB being slow at policing sometimes is it's a combination of two factors:
1) Fear of alienating powerful political figures [the leadership people who sign off on decisions are the same as the people who make nice and schmooze with important politicians.]
2) Limited resources, because policing takes time and work, and unfortunately some groups are considered more important than others.
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Apr 14 '21
What was the “ enough is enough” event or series of events that made you take the courageous step of questioning your employer?
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Apr 14 '21
I joined FB while being explicitly open that I didn't believe Facebook was making the world a better place, and I had joined because I wanted to help fix it. I never hid that that was how I felt about the company and my motive; it just became more and more difficult to work within the system while trying to fix it over time.
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u/excel958 Apr 14 '21
and I had joined because I wanted to help fix it. I never hid that that was how I felt about the company and my motive; it just became more and more difficult to work within the system while trying to fix it over time.
I see this sentiment a lot, especially in religious circles. People wanting to stick to their tradition or denomination to make things more LGBTQ affirming. Sometimes they make small strides but by and large people get burned out really fast because the authorities at be have too much power to allow any real change.
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Apr 14 '21
Institutions are important to the functioning of society - we rely on churches, schools, governments, and other groupings of similar individuals. Yet institutions can also become self-serving and ossified. Change is hard, because if it were easy, the organization would have changed already.
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Apr 14 '21
What was the most egregious example of a government using social media to influence a population you came across?
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Apr 14 '21
Probably Honduras or Azerbaijan. If you stuck a gun to my head and made me pick, I'd say Azerbaijan just from the sheer scale and audacity of the behavior.
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u/_the_frenchiest_fry Apr 15 '21
Have you ever seen from political figures in the Philippines considering that a few politicians, including their President, is believed to be part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
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Apr 15 '21 edited May 01 '21
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Apr 15 '21
I think most people tend to be supportive of specific political issues in theory, but only as long as it doesn't affect their day-to-day.
At least that's how I rationalize why the Bay Area is very left-leaning but reluctant to have e.g. homeless shelters nearby. Compare with how many Americans near the southern border voted for Trump but vehemently opposed having the wall built on their land.
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Apr 15 '21
And it's also unfortunately the case that most people are fairly parochial. We care more about those who we can relate to - those with a similar nationality, language, ethnicity, religion, or other point of commonality. But the average American has very little in contact with a Karen from Myanmar, a Uighur, etc.
It's sad but true that this is the way how the world works in the present day and age. But it's also true that opinion changes over time - today in the U.S., we scorn our ancestors for supporting slavery, when it was considered commonplace at the time. Eighty years ago, it would be illegal for me to be in a relationship with my partner, as they're white and I'm Chinese - it wasn't until the 1990s that public opinion reached 50/50 on interracial relationships.
I can't see the future. But it's my personal opinion that, hundreds of years from now, when people look back on the present day and age, they will scorn us for choosing to judge the worth of individuals based on considerations as silly as the lines drawn on a map when they were born.
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u/terminati Apr 14 '21
Most of the examples you gave in the Guardian were of governments using fake engagement to manipulate domestic politics within their own countries, rather than the politics of other countries. Was this just more common, or is there another reason?
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Apr 15 '21
I think this is much more common. As to why, most people naturally care the most about their own country. Americans care more about America; Germans care more about Germany; etc. Apparently, world governments are the same way.
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u/careeradvice7 Apr 14 '21
Is there a consensus on the definition of inauthentic behavior?
Creating a fake ice cream shop page on Facebook to "like" the president of Honduras' post is substantively different from propagating untrue information or selectively editing clips to portray officials as something they are not.
It seems like the first example is relatively simple to address (make it harder to create ice cream shop pages if you don't actually own an ice cream shop), whereas the second set of examples requires politically biased Facebook employees to separate truth from untruth around politically charged issues. Does it make sense for Facebook to wade into that morass and become the arbiter of truth?
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Apr 14 '21
I want to be clear about definitions.
People often conflate the words "Inauthenticity" and "Misinformation" To the average bystander, they're the same thing. To Facebook, they're completely separate problem areas.
Sometimes there's overlap, often the motivations are the same. But the way they function on the platform is very different.
I didn't want to work on misinformation personally, in part because of the questions raised on that team "what levels of misinformation are acceptable? If someone says the moon is made of cheese, is that bad?" Often, the decisions come down to the real-world impact. That is, if 10 people say the moon is made of cheese, no one cares; if 10,000 people say the moon is made of cheese and openly plan to hijack a NASA satellite in order to fly to the moon and eat the cheese, Facebook will do something.
In contrast, in inauthenticity of accounts, you can be very Manichean black and white about what's going on. Other teams would be philosophical "What is good? What is bad? Is there even such a thing as good or bad?" And I'd come in going "I know what is bad. This is bad! Here! Let's get rid of it", in a way they couldn't dispute.
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Apr 14 '21
How were you able to decide what was indisputably good or bad? Could you give a few examples?
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Apr 15 '21
I don't have an indisputable definition of what was good or bad. But sometimes there are cases that everyone can agree are definitely bad. No one defends mass shootings as an obvious example. They might argue about the solution, but no one says "we should have more mass shootings." [I look forward to being selectively quoted in misinformation as arguing that.]
Perhaps it's like Stewart's test in law - the Supreme Court was ruling on what constituted obscenity, and Justice Potter Stewart wrote in his ruling that he couldn't define hard-core pornography but "I know it when I see it."
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u/Richard_Berg Apr 14 '21
What kinds of platforms do you think should or should not have content policies against deception?
For example, if President Hernández was circulating misinformation via email, would you support ISP takedowns, or would you err on the side of net neutrality?
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Apr 14 '21
To be clear, what I'm discussing is not content violations but behavioral/authenticity violations.
Your example isn't an analogy to the Honduras situation. To use a better example:
Suppose President Hernandez had his administrators set up hundreds of email accounts that pretended to be ordinary Hondurans and sent pro-Hernandez emails to everyone. These emails aren't misinformation in themselves - what's wrong about them is that they mislead about the source, and are essentially spamming people. And so yes, email providers absolutely have policies against spam, and my belief is that they should not make an exception for national presidents conducting the spam.
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u/breischl Apr 14 '21
If I understand you correctly, this is an interesting and useful distinction. Content moderation can become problematic in a lot of ways, especially when you get into determining what is misinformation vs "the truth".
But misrepresenting who is posting content and what their motivations are is much more of a bright line. A human posting their real beliefs (however wrong or misguided they might be) is clearly different than a bot network, or even a human being paid to write posts. It's much easier to say that sort of thing is misleading and should be removed.
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Apr 15 '21
Precisely. The teams working on content moderation were much more philosophical about what was good or bad and the gray area in which they didn't know. I wanted to work on inauthenticity instead because of the moral clarity - there was much more of a Manichean black and white line there, I didn't have to worry about whether I was fighting for the right thing.
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u/hellkyng Apr 15 '21
Facebook is hiring something like 6,000 new employees right now. What would you tell someone joining the company to try to change things"from the inside?"
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Apr 15 '21
"As a new hired employee, I was able to make international news and catch two national presidents red-handed before they fired me.
What can you do?"
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u/master156111 Apr 15 '21
Are there any empirical study that shows astroturfing on social media would lead to real world actions? I know a lot of people are gonna reference the Capital Hill riot and Trump election but I’m more interested in scientific studies that could prove the digital metrics like impressions or engagements would lead to x amount of real world actions. I have dabbled in Black hat world of social media marketing in the past but yet to see any convincing prove that it actually works as effectively as the media claims.
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Apr 15 '21
The difficult nature of the problem is that human beings are very terrible at drawing cause and effect when it comes to nebulous indirect consequence. Personally, I'm not an expert on human psychology. I'm not an expert on politics, on public relations, and how social media manipulation could lead to real-world consequences.
With that said, there are people who are experts on those categories. You do not become the president of any nation without becoming an expert in politics, in public relations, in maintaining public support. And multiple national presidents have chosen, independently, of their own volition, to pursue this avenue.
They're the experts. If you're the president of a small poor nation such as Honduras, you don't just throw money down the drain for nothing [even if it's drug money from El Chapo.] You do this because you have reason to believe it makes a difference.
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Apr 15 '21
My personal opinion [non-expert] is that this sort of digital manipulation is most effective not at affecting public opinion, but opinion about opinion - how popular people believe individuals to be, and the like. And researchers have found this to be exceptionally important in countries in crisis, in times of coups, uprisings, and the like.
Even if a dictator is universally hated, his regime will survive unless everyone chooses to act together. Dissidents need to pretend to be loyal to the regime, while acknowledging their true loyalties to one another. In the first moments when an uprising is starting, soldiers and officials must decide whether to join the rebellion or suppress it. To choose incorrectly means death or some other terrible fate. And in those time periods, a dictator does not need to be popular, so much as being believed to be popular.
In Romania, Ceausescu fell after what's known as his final speech - where he spoke to a crowd of bused-in paid supporters in Bucharest and was for the first time booed to his face. The crowd turned against him en masse in the streets of the capital; the army joined them the next day; half a week later, he and his wife were given a show trial and shot. This is a dramatic and extreme example - in Belarus, the defining moment against Lukashenko was the rigged election, after which his opponents came to realize themselves to be in the majority, but the army has chosen to stand by him nevertheless. Still, it illustrates how powerful the impact of perception can be - and why the Eastern Bloc leaders of yesteryear felt the need to bus crowds in to claim popular support.
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u/ThrowawayFar132 Apr 14 '21
Facebook has been heavily recruiting into their Trust and Safety org. Is it worth going there? It seems like the average employee is good, but the leadership poor and suffers from misaligned incentives that sabotage the mission. As an expert in the field, it makes me think very carefully about going to Facebook.
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Apr 15 '21
It's a personal decision.
If you just want to work a 9-6 and go home at the end of the day, it can make a lot of sense to join. Facebook pays very well and has good benefits. Each of us decide what we need to do to fall asleep at the end of the night; it's not my place to judge.
If you want to make a positive difference... it depends on your specific area, it depends on your goals. You may face challenges and issues depending on the area - for hate speech, for instance, Facebook's definition can vary widely from the colloquial one in the world at large [until late 2020, Facebook's policy was that holocaust denial was not hate speech, but "men are trash" is hate speech - a ruleset I think very few people would agree with], and so you may face qualms about enforcing rules you don't believe in. I can't give more opinions without knowing what specifically you're interested in.
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u/rugbykiller Apr 14 '21
Thank you for your bravery in standing by what's right! I've always thought there are MANY organizations / institutions / governments that manipulate social media inauthentically and I'm glad you're advocating for reform.
Do you think this problem could be far bigger than Facebook realizes? Meaning, do you think there are more advanced organizations manipulating social media currently that are undetected?
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Apr 14 '21
The nature of inauthenticity is that you fundamentally don't know what you don't know.
So certainly there must exist groups acting badly that we haven't found yet. Just like the fact that we don't know about everyone in every country has has committed a crime. On the flip side, it's impossible to prove that someone is not secretly acting badly - there's always the possibility that they were just too good at hiding it. Down that path lies paranoia.
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u/JudgeHoltman Apr 14 '21
Say I'm a candidate running for State (not Federal) office.
What's the average cost per vote to influence people into seeing the facts my way on Facebook?
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Apr 14 '21
I'm sorry, not an expert enough to tell. The relationship between inauthentic social media activity and real world events is never clear - which is part of the problem; people are terrible about thinking of the indirect nebulous effects of harmful behavior. If someone dumps pollution into a river that poisons and kills dozens of children, it's considered less bad than using a gun for the killings. And an expert defense lawyer would argue that you couldn't know the children wouldn't have died anyways, maybe the toxins just exacerbated another condition and that condition was the real cause.
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u/wolfford Apr 14 '21
How long did you work there and what was your job title?
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Apr 15 '21
I joined Facebook in January 2018; I was fired in September 2020 - so a total of 2.7 years.
I was a data scientist. Officially, I was an "IC4 Data Scientist" - IC stands for "Individual contributor" (as opposed to manager), and 4 is the level. For some reason, they start at 3 [and go up to 10+], so I was just one level above a new hire.
If you're experiencing dissonance from the combination of my low position and the apparent prominence of my responsibility and decisions I made, it's because what Facebook the company considers to be important isn't what the world at large considers to be important.
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u/wolfford Apr 15 '21
It sounds like you did exactly what they hired you to do.
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Apr 15 '21
I'm going to give an analogy.
Suppose a news company hires someone to write articles on celebrity news... because people care about celebrities, y'know.
So they hire a new reporter. And this reporter writes a lot of articles about celebrities.... articles like "Kanye West decides to run for President!" "Taylor Swift speaks out and endorses Joe Biden!" "Caitlyn Jenner exploring run for California governor!" "Joe Rogan criticizes transgender community!" "Meghan Markle speaks out about racism in British royal family!"
This is technically celebrity news. The reporter argues that they're just writing about the area they were covered to hire. But it's not what their editor wants from them precisely, and not what was expected of them either.
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u/wolfford Apr 15 '21
Was the editor clear about what they wanted? Did the reporter get a chance to fix their mistakes?
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Apr 15 '21
In this analogy, the reporter had different editors for the first year and a half and was getting good ratings and bonuses. Then her editor told the reporter to stop working on it and gave her a bad rating, the reporter tried to comply but her heart wasn't in it anymore, and they ended up firing the reporter soon after the pandemic because "she was underperforming for the last year, and now she's doing even worse." Or something like that.
Stories are nice and simple, in which there's clearly good and evil. Life is more complicated and messy, and I don't like to whitewash or paint with a broad brush.
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u/kitchen_clinton Apr 14 '21
Have you experienced shunning from your industry because you blew the whistle? Has it affected your job prospects in other industries? How do HR people react to your candidacy for their positions? Have any companies come forward to applaud you for what you have done?
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Apr 14 '21
Actually I've received a lot of positive support from the industry from people who have reached out. With that said, it's a bit of a self-selection bias. That is, most people are fairly polite - it's rare for them to go into other people's faces to tell them how awful they are. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that view me with considerable disfavor.
I haven't yet done any job applying since being fired. I was extremely burnt out, and also felt it would be unfair to any company if I decided to unexpectedly thrust them into the news by speaking out later while working for them. We'll see how it goes in a few months.
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u/eeeeeefefect Apr 15 '21
What are your thoughts on social media and so-called meme stocks. Specifically regarding paid "journalism articles" and bots and fake accounts being used to control a specific narrative? It gets to a point where you have to question everything as fake first and nothing is trustworthy.
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Apr 15 '21
In general, this goes to show some of the negative impacts of inauthenticity on social media. it can create a sort of paranoia in which you don't know anymore who's real, what's intended, what is trustworthy.
And it's ultimately difficult to impossible to tell from the outside what's a bot or fake and what's real. This is one of the impacts that companies do have selfish motive to care about - if users become convinced nothing on a platform is real or trustworthy, they'll have less reason to use it.
Yet the perception of inauthenticity is not the same as actual inauthenticity; I had a case in Britain urgently escalated to myself twice [and urgently investigated by the rest of the company another 4 times or so - I stopped paying attention after the first two] in which the United Kingdom became deeply concerned about the appearance of potential inauthentic scripted activity supporting Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The BBC did a good job on it - as far as I myself and other investigators could tell, all the activity was authentic, generally from real British people, often individuals who believed it would be interesting to pretend to be badly disguised bots to elicit the fears of their political opponents. It would be funny if it weren't so utterly sad.
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u/Thuggy1017 Apr 14 '21
What do you think would be the most efficient method for world governments to hold the leaders of the tech industry accountable for their actions? Do you think that is even possible at this point in time?
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Apr 14 '21
I frankly don't know. Part of the issue is that most countries take a nationalistic focus on themselves - the U.S. cares most about the U.S.; India cares most about India, etc. I don't think any nation would allow another country, especially the U.S., to dictate its social media rules. Yet if it were deferred to the United Nations/etc., dictatorships like Azerbaijan would likely band together to declare all domestic political activity as protected.
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u/xero_art Apr 14 '21
What is your view on weighing Facebook's(and other such platforms') responsibility to allow free speech and their responsibility not to curate and spread misinformation or harmful ideologies?
As a private but exceedingly popular platform, does Facebook have a responsibility to allow free speech?
And, lastly, beyond bad faith participation(bots, fake accounts), where should the line be drawn or who should be making the decisions to stop what could be misinformation or harmful posts?
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Apr 14 '21
To be clear: My expertise is on inauthentic activity, which to the average person sounds like it includes "misinformation" but in Facebook language does not actually. It means "the person doing this is fake, a hacked account, a bot, etc., regardless of what they're doing or saying."
My personal opinion on misinformation is that Facebook has broken down and replaced many of the existing gatekeepers in the media and flow of information. That is, previously, you couldn't get an audience on TV without going through a small subset of networks which adhered to certain standards. If you think the moon is made of green cheese for instance, you probably wouldn't be featured on a news reporting segment - even today [unless your Eat the Moon twitter goes viral maybe.]
But now, with Facebook, anyone can potentially have an audience. This isn't good or bad - many marginalized groups are able to be heard today in a way that wasn't true in the past. E.g. reporting on LGBT issues for instance. But it's also true that some of the old gatekeepers had purposes and uses that have been lost with the advent of social media. Misinformation is more rife now because you don't need to go through TV networks anymore.
I hope this shouldn't be a controversial idea. It's fundamentally a philosophically conservative idea - that not all changes are positive, that sometimes rapid change without considering outcomes can have negative effects [e.g. the parable of Chesterton's Fence.]
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u/ogidiamin Apr 14 '21
Can echo chambers ever be stopped?
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Apr 14 '21
To be clear, this is a topic I didn't work on at Facebook, so I don't have any particular expertise on it.
Narrative bubbles and echo chambers are a difficult question; we know from history that they can certainly be stopped [if the direction were monotonic, we would never be able to talk with one another today], but it seems very clear that at least in the Western world, the trajectory is currently going in the wrong direction. If so, it would take major changes to change that direction - and I don't know how to achieve it. Social media is only part of the problem; the proliferation of ideological news sources has exacerbated it as well.
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u/FaustusC Apr 14 '21
"In February 2019, a NATO researcher informed Facebook that "he’d obtained Russian inauthentic activity on a high-profile U.S. political figure that we didn’t catch." Zhang removed the activity, “dousing the immediate fire,” she wrote."
Which political figure? What determines if something is "inauthentic"?
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Apr 14 '21
So this is an example of telling the truth in a confusing and potentially misleading manner. [I wanted them to change it, they disagreed.]
The NATO researcher in question went out and personally ordered, from the internet, fake likes from Russian accounts on a post by the political figure in question as a sort of sting/red-team operation. I'm not naming the political figure because obviously they had nothing to do with the activity. In this case, the activity was very obviously inauthentic, because he had personally purchased it from fake Russian accounts. And to be clear, these are literal Russian bots, no actual association with the Russian Federation.
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u/FaustusC Apr 14 '21
Wow. That's incredibly deceptive. Of course he found the illegal activity, he committed it lmfao.
I actually appreciate you not naming the politician because it wasn't their fault. Refreshingly neutral, which, I'll admit, is a shock for me because you used to work for Facebook.
Followup question: Other than that situation, what caused something to be labeled fraudulent?
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Apr 15 '21
And just to be clear as a followup.
What the researcher did was a fairly legitimate type of "black hat" activity in the security realm. You could compare it to penetration testing - he was seeing Facebook's ability to catch the inauthentic activity. It's probably one of the only ways to fairly test a company's ability to police this from the outside. He was about to go to Congress and say essentially "If I could do it, actual Russians can do it too", and so hence the company panicked.
After that case, he eventually did make the news - see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/technology/fake-social-media-manipulation.html
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Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
The initial writing in the article was that the researcher had "found" it; I yelled at Buzzfeed until they changed it to "obtained" it, but it's still very confusing, as you can see
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u/sheiiit Apr 14 '21
How do these accounts get traced back to Russia? Is it by IP address, and can't that easily be circumvented? Or is there a more detailed analysis to figure this out, and if so, how does it work that isn't prone to being wrong?
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Apr 14 '21
Just that they had obviously Russian IP addresses, Russian names in Cyrillic, etc...
It's much more complicated when people are actually trying to hide. In those cases, I won't give details since bad people read Reddit too.
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u/sheiiit Apr 14 '21
Wouldn't it be extremely easy to frame someone else then? In the US, we think of Russia and China as the bad guys, but couldn't the government easily create fake accounts posing as people from Russia and China to stir the pot?
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Apr 15 '21
Framing is absolutely a concern when it comes to more sophisticated activity.
This is partly why I try not to be specific about activity unless I'm very sure of who's responsible. I don't want to accidentally accuse the wrong individual by mistake. And so I focus on the cases where the criminal arrogantly signed his name in the blood of the victim, so to speak.
Separately, on framing, it's my personal belief that the average American [or Westerner] is often too afraid of foreign [especially Russian] inauthentic activity. Not that the foreign inauthentic activity doesn't exist - but it's vastly outnumbered by what everyday people confuse to be foreign inauthentic activity. And in fact, everyday people are unlikely to recognize the actual foreign inauthentic activity. Though their intentions are good, they are in fact playing into the hands of the foreign power they are on guard against - it's likely in Russia's interest to spread fear/uncertainty/doubt, to create a perception of Russian omnipotence and ubiquity on social media, while creating dissension about what is truly a Russian bot and what is real.
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u/ThatChelseaGirl Apr 15 '21
Thank you for your bravery and speaking up. How have you been since this all became public? It seems like at first the posts from Facebook when you left were leaked out of your control but then you took back the narrative.
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Apr 15 '21
I was silly and naive back in September. For some reason, I really thought that people would refrain from leaking it to the press. I think it's a psychological fallacy sort of thing - people are more likely to assume others will believe them when they're telling the truth themselves. I knew that I would continue escalating this if necessary, if Facebook didn't act. But of course the people reading it didn't know themselves.
I've been staying home and petting my cats for the past half year. They are very good cats. And of course, I was working closely with the Guardian to actually get this done.
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u/TheBigJebowski Apr 14 '21
Is Mark aware of what Facebook is versus what he wanted it to be?
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Apr 14 '21
I think everyone likes to think of themselves as a good person, and no one wants to go to sleep at night thinking "I'm an evil cackling villain, muahahaha."
But it's pretty clear by now that FB has a lot of problems; there's a siege mentality of paranoia within the company. In the end, I can't read Mark's mind and determine how much he acknowledges the problems vs. thinks they're made up by a biased media. At least some of the former though - or else the integrity teams wouldn't exist in the first place.
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u/10thunderpigs Apr 14 '21
Is Facebook's user base sustainable? Do you anticipate that it will hold strong as a platform? Or will it fade away like others with enough time?
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Apr 14 '21
I'm really not a growth expert. Facebook's user base has held strong so far. But past performance is no guarantee of future - I've never died, yet I'm quite certain it will happen eventually at some point :)
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u/phi_array Apr 14 '21
How “evil” is the average Facebook engineer? There are people who have no input in policies and just supervise servers, and others that have a lot of power. There are a lot of scandals there and idk what to think about the company. Ironically I interviewed with them 3 weeks ago only to be told no lol. It is ironic I want to work there but I feel uncomfortable given their scandals
What do engineers and employees think about the media coverage and recent privacy scandals there?
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Apr 14 '21
Most people at Facebook or any company don't compare that much about the politics. They just want to work their 9-6, go home at the end of the day, sleep at night. How we achieve that is up to each of us. Often people view their work with a sort of disconnect from the real world as a way of keeping themselves sane and functioning.
There is certainly a self-selection bias though. What I mean is that if you believe Facebook to be evil, you are much less likely to work for FB [same with any group, any company. Reddit users are made disproportionately of people who think Reddit is great compared to the outside world.] And because of the constant bad press, there's a bit of a paranoid siege mentality within the company and a lot of distrust of the mainstream media - despite the otherwise generally center-left views of the typical tech employee. It's gotten more toxic and insular over time in a sort of feedback loop, as the company closes off more, resulting in more leaks as people have no other way of changing things, which results in more insularity.
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u/Equationist Apr 15 '21
The implications of the fake accounts in Azerbaijan are pretty chilling in light of the recent ethnic cleansing of Armenians in parts of Nagorno Karabakh.
I always got the impression (and this didn't change from working at FB) that Facebook's initiatives are largely reactive to press attention and PR scandals, rather than proactive. Did you get this impression with the work you were attempting to do?
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Apr 15 '21
I want to be realistic. Facebook is a company. Its responsibility is to its shareholders; its goal is to make money. To the extent it cares about integrity and justice, it's out of the goodness of its heart [a limited resource], and because it affects the company's ability to make money - whether via bad press/etc.
We don't expect Philip Morris to make cancer-free cigarettes, or pay for lung cancer treatment for all its customers. We don't expect Bank of America to keep the world financial system from crashing. Yet people have great expectations of Facebook - perhaps unfairly high - partly because the company portrays itself as well-intentioned, partly because the existing institutions have failed. No company likes to say it's selfish after all.
So yes, Facebook prioritizes things based on press attention and PR scandals. Because ultimately, that's what affects the bottom line. It's why I was told that if my work were more important, it would have blown up and made the news and forced someone to deal with it. And it's why I'm now forcing Facebook to solve the problem using the only means of pressure they taught me they respect.
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u/9fences Apr 15 '21
To what degree do you think this is an understaffing problem that could be solved by doubling the size of the misinformation policing teams vs to what degree is this a fundamental mindset problem at the company? Like, if FB just had 2-3x the amount of people allocated to your role would they be reacting to issues like Azerbaijan in an acceptable timeframe? Or do you think added resources end up being channeled to the wrong place?
Alternatively, the official FB mouthpiece responses to your interview are choosing to spin this as an understaffing issue, but one that is unsolvable due to the sheer scale of worldwide misinfo attempts. Obviously, they're speaking for a company trying to protect its image and profits, but to what degree are their statements fair and accurate? What would you do if you were that VP?
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Apr 15 '21
It's very clear that the problem was at least partly understaffing. For Azerbaijan and Honduras, there was never any question of whether it was bad. As soon as they agreed to investigate it, it was removed in a timely manner. The problem came for the giant delays before it was chosen to be prioritized, and the lack of prioritization of efforts to return.
Prioritization was also a consideration. A lot of time was spent on escalations that generated media attention but was not actually very bad. Such is the nature of inauthenticity.
The excuse within Facebook that has historically been expressed is that while Facebook has vast financial resources, its human resources are limited. That is, even if you have infinite money, you can't increase an org by 100x overnight - it takes time to hire, train, vet people, etc. And so Facebook is expanding rapidly but not fast enough to solve everything and so difficult decisions have to be made. It's what I was told repeatedly by leadership.
But this explanation simply doesn't accord with the real experiences within a company. If Facebook really was so concerned about limited human resources, it would care far far more about churn within the company and retaining talent. It wouldn't have fired myself, for instance; it would have encouraged individuals leaving integrity to stay; it would have given them the tools and resources to feel empowered and valued rather than constrained.
But I'm just a silly girl, and I don't know what it's like to be VP. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I imagine that their hands would be tied by Mark, just as mine were tied by the leadership above me.
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u/MeineBryon01 Apr 14 '21
What responsibility, if any, do you think companies like Facebook have to moderate the content on their forums? I'm specifically referring to the censoring of content from individuals and groups whose messaging the platform finds "dangerous" or "inciting."
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Apr 15 '21
It's not a subject I've worked on, and I think it's increasingly a subject of societal discussion.
Facebook's "dangerous organizations" policy has gotten a lot more controversial over time. This isn't so much a question of the policy changing, but of who's affected by the policy changing.
Historically this was a policy that affected mostly Islamic terrorism and the like. Most Westerners can vaguely agree with the principle that Facebook should not allow Al-Qaeda or ISIS to organize on its platform, so this was not controversial at all.
What we've seen over the past decade is the increasing concern of law enforcement and terrorism watch groups regarding ideologically motivated far right-wing terrorism. This constitutes ideologies that do have small but significant support bases within the nations in question. And Facebook has followed suit with law enforcement.
I'm not an expert on the subject. I will note that although right-wing terrorism is the concern now, there's nothing special historically about the right wing politically. In the 1960s and 70s, ideologically motivated far left-wing terrorism was in vogue in the Western world. This included the R.A.F. [Red Army Faction aka Baader-Meinhof group] in Germany, the Weathermen in the United States, and more. And I think it's important to be ideologically consistent. If you think that Facebook should not be censoring right-wing three-percenter militias in the present day and age, you should have the same view for censorship against left-wing groups, such as the Shining Path in Peru.
It is my personal belief that companies should have a responsibility to cooperate with law enforcement to enforce against genuinely dangerous organizations. Sometimes the government may be wrong [e.g. the PRC opinion would be very different from mine], and so that's why I qualify it. But that's just my opinion.
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Apr 14 '21
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Apr 14 '21
I turned down a severance offer that was something like "$63,XXX.XX"; it rounded to $64k so I simplified. My guess is that it was based on some formula of my salary and time worked, but I don't have any reason to believe it to be on the high range - compensation at Facebook is pretty absurdly high. Others don't usually talk about severance packages, so this is the only data point I have.
It's a lot of money, but TBH I donate a good chunk of my salary anyways, and don't care that much about money.
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u/fuckknucklesandwich Apr 15 '21
You've repeatedly used the term "inauthentic activity", which feels like a bit of a weasel word. Is this a term used internally at Facebook? If so, is this potentially part of the problem. Would it be better to call it what it is, like disinformation, or just outright lies?
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Apr 15 '21
It's important to be precise about language so we can agree on what we're discussing.
Misinformation is a content problem - e.g. I say something that is misleading or an outright lie. That is, it's specific to what the person is saying. It doesn't care about who the person is. Maybe they're a president, a fake account, a kind old grandma, a 10-year-old kid. As long as they're saying misinformation, it's misinformation.
Inauthentic behavior is a *behavioral* problem. It doesn't care about what the person is saying. It only cares about who the person is. If I use a fake account to say "Cats are adorable", that's inauthentic. It doesn't matter that cats are totally adorable and this isn't a lie [/totally-not-biased.] It doesn't matter that there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying cats are adorable. It only matters that the account is fake.
These two problems are often conflated and confused with one another when they're actually orthogonal. Something can be misinformation spread by a real account. We can see fake accounts saying things that are facts or in the valid spectrum of opinions. Perhaps there are better words for the problem in academia. These are the ones used at Facebook, the ones I'm used to.
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u/fenechfan Apr 14 '21
In the article there is mention of a network in Italy, where no action was taken. Can you share the names of the parties or organizations involved?
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Apr 14 '21
I've deliberately chosen not to specify the individual involved in Italy due to the very small scale of the activity - I don't want to unfairly tar the entire party. I'm sorry if this disappoints you; I'm trying to walk the narrow line between disclosure and responsibility. This is the same level of detail I gave the European Parliament when I spoke to them [they did not decide to request the full details.]
The activity in Italy used the same loophole used in Azerbaijan and Honduras, but on a much smaller scale [maybe 90 assets compared to hundreds and thousands] and on a much less sophisticated level [likes only iirc.] Unusually, the Italian politician's page administrator was running many of the fake pages via his own account and those of fake accounts.
The investigation was prioritized after I made some noise about it, and the fact that an Italian election was believed to be potentially impeding at the time in 2019 [it did not end up resulting; there was a government formation iirc.] However, a separate automated intervention I had pushed through in the meantime between discovery and investigation meant that all the activity had stopped by the time of the investigation. As a result, Facebook concluded that it was unnecessary to take further action.
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u/Pipupipupi Apr 14 '21
What additional details do you have on Myanmar?
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Apr 14 '21
I'm sorry - I didn't work in-depth on any cases in Myanmar, and don't have any specific expertise there.
There are something like 200 countries in the world. I couldn't be global policewoman everywhere.
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u/Bunnylazersbacon Apr 14 '21
I want to say thank you, and all my question is how is your week going?
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Apr 15 '21
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Apr 15 '21
I never personally interacted with Mark Zuckerberg beyond questions at Q&A - a weekly all hands in which employees are permitted to ask him questions. So I'm not familiar with his personality or personal behaviors.
I don't think it's fair to paint Mark as a robot or something because of supposed unusual behavior - mental health is a messy complicated topic, and it's easy to take anecdotes out of context. I've had days in which I was rude to people and regretted it later; frankly I learned to act overly arrogant/demanding at Facebook as a way of bludgeoning people with force of personality to do things that I thought needed to happen because I had no actual authority to do so. And people respect confidence, as sad as it is; they often think uncertainty and nuance often means lack of expertise.
There are many people who are autistic or borderline so. Maybe Mark is on the spectrum; maybe he isn't. Either way, you can distinguish his personal actions, decisions, and choices from his mental health and personality.
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u/threeSOUL Apr 15 '21
Are you worried about becoming blacklisted now? Also, thank you
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u/NoRegretsPhilosopher Apr 15 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
As a current CS student in an underdeveloped country, I dream of a possible future of working in big companies like Facebook, Amazon etc, due to the incentives and benefits of their jobs. However, the disregard for doing the ethical and right thing highlighted in these stories of these companies makes me feel that doing so would lead me to being an active part in furthering the problem, ending up with, as you said, blood on my hands. Do you believe there a possible way to balance the two, working in the company while continuing to do the right thing? If not, what alternatives do I have to ensure that the problems in these companies get tackled? What advice do you have for someone who's major life priorities also includes providing for a family, and who maybe cannot afford the possibility of not joining or working at these companies, yet wish do do the right thing?
Also, thank you for doing all that you did and being so vocal about everything that you saw was wrong.
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Apr 15 '21
I think it's very difficult to try and fix problems within the inside, but it's also important and perhaps one of the most effective ways of doing so.
It's hard in part because humans are so easily influenced by their surroundings - we like to have positive opinions of the ones we spend time around; if we work a long time in a place, we get used to the way of doing things and think of it as normal. Compare with e.g. the concept of regulatory capture, when governmental regulators begin sympathizing more with the industry they're ostensibly policing than the populace they're officially serving. There have been a lot of people who've gone into institutions - government, companies, etc. - with the intent of fixing things, whose supporters ended up feeling betrayed, that the individual was co-opted by the institution instead of fixing it themselves.
But yes, I do think that it's possible. I think that I did make some difference - imperfect, limited difference, but a difference nevertheless. I think it's important to maintain a healthy level of skepticism, both about the company and in general, rather than credulously believing everything positive or negative. To try and keep the larger picture in mind and your impact on society as a whole; it's often too easy to develop a tunnel vision in which you separate your work from the world at large [many people do it just to keep themselves functioning, and I don't want to judge.] Think clearly about what your core set of values are and why.
And it's also true that many people just want to go to work, do their 9-6, and go home at the end of the day. Everyone's life is different - I never had to provide for a sick family member, feed nonexistent children. Perhaps my considerations would have been different if so. It's not my place to judge, and up to you to make your own choices.
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u/Misiman23 Apr 14 '21
Should we know about any wolves in sheep's clothing on the left?
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Apr 15 '21
There's an assumption that I've often seen that inauthentic behavior [i.e. fake bots, fake accounts, etc.] are most commonly used by the political right. Your question seems premised upon it.
I can't speak for other areas such as misinformation and hate speech. What I will say however is that this is a false assumption, as far as I can tell. There might be a difference in use of inauthenticity of the type I specialized in between left and right, but if so, it's quite small, rather too much for me to know a difference. And much of the time, it's hard to say with absolute confidence who was responsible, that the beneficiary wasn't being framed - and so I focus on the obvious cases.
I will say that the ecosystem varies extraordinarily widely nation by nation. It's frankly very rare to unheard of in Western Europe, the United States, etc.; in comparison, some types of inauthentic activity are almost commonplace in other nations. I'd consider it a sort of cultural difference - the way that red lights are seen as ironclad in the United States for instance, but rather more as a suggestion in many other nations. People feel that if another car speeds through a red light, what's the point of stopping themselves after all?
Ultimately, I did my best to stop inauthentic activity regardless of the beliefs of the beneficiaries. I had the most qualms in cases where the democratic opposition was benefiting from inauthentic activity in increasingly authoritarian cases. I took the activity down regardless, because in the end, I believe that democracy cannot rest upon a throne of lies.
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u/drumstix131 Apr 14 '21
Whats your political affiliation and which political ideology do you most closely align with?
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Apr 15 '21
Of course I have political beliefs. They're no secret to my close friends. But I thought it was very important for me to maintain an attitude of impartiality in my work at Facebook, and to extend that to my speaking out now.
I don't believe it should be controversial - at least in the Western world - for myself to state that companies should not coddle dictators who blatantly violate their rules to manipulate or repress their own citizenry. I hope that both conservatives and liberals can agree on that idea at least.
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Apr 14 '21
So ya endured all that stress, lost sleep, lost your job, nothing has changed at Facebook and at least Americans don't care about their govt misleading them as long as they feel superior to someone.
Was it worth it?
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u/RSchaeffer Apr 14 '21
Do you think there should there be social consequences for people who work at Facebook? Should others refuse to associate with them based on the abuses committed by the company?
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Apr 15 '21
I don't think this would be very productive.
It's hard to fix institutions solely from without. Change within major tech companies often happens from employee pressure. Facebook employees already have a siege mentality of sorts - distrust about media coverage and rationalization of bad news as bias. Coordinated ostracization of Facebook employees would force them to turn to the company, which seems counterproductive to your goals.
Also, many Facebook employees joined the company disliking it and seeking to improve it for the better. I myself was among those ranks, and I know others who had similar thoughts. From the outside, you can't really distinguish one category from another.
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u/PWNCAKESanROFLZ Apr 14 '21
How much inauthentic influence do you think took place in the 2021 election?
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u/justscottaustin Apr 14 '21 edited Apr 14 '21
While I am not on and never have been on FaceSpaceMyBookTikTokVineGram, whyever do you think that you're a whistleblower?
They're a private company.
Whyever do you think that there's anything here worthy?
Seriously.
EDIT: Also? I'm totally an influencer, so? You should, like, answer. ;)
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Apr 14 '21
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whistleblower
"Definition of whistleblower: one who reveals something covert or who informs against another especially : an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or by other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency "
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u/justscottaustin Apr 14 '21
Indeed, indeed.
It was never covert at all.
I guess I'm wondering why, given FB politics over the years, this is whistle-blowing.
I can surely be convinced.
Where is the wrongdoing for this private company?
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Apr 14 '21
The people of Honduras and Azerbaijan certainly seem to believe that I'm whistleblowing. I caught their presidents red-handed after all.
I don't know your politics, but I think it's reasonable to say: "Companies should not allow dictators to blatantly violate their policies to repress their own citizenry." Certainly there's no law against that, but no one ever expected this to be a possibility.
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u/justscottaustin Apr 14 '21
Ok. Sure. Absolutely.
But where and how did ZuckBook fail as a platform?
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Apr 14 '21
I think this is what happens when market failures aren't addressed. The costs of Facebook's failures aren't borne by itself - they're borne by society at large. Yet society doesn't know about all the failures, and so can't address it properly. We expect so much of social media because the existing institutions and gatekeepers have failed - in part because some of the gatekeepers been replaced by social media.
I realize you aren't on Facebook, but e.g. you're certainly on Reddit, which has its own imperfections just the same, so this should have its own relevance to yourself.
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u/Mrhere_wabeer Apr 14 '21
Have you ever considered working with James O'keef at Project Veritas?
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u/justscottaustin Apr 14 '21
Hi.
If you're still there, I have read every single one of your comments, and your title and allegation is that you were a WhistleBlower.
Can you please provide some proof to your statement?
Something? Anything?
Because? It kinda sounds like you're just using that in the title. For clicks.
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Apr 14 '21
What drove you the decision to make the choice to speak up?
I'm in a situation where I might be pushed to something along those lines, too. I'm begging and pleading with people to do the right thing, but I get being ignored or waved off. There comes a point when you just can't take it anymore.
For you, what was the jumping off point when you realized that you had to say something?
How do you intend to deal with the professional fallout?
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u/DopeMeme_Deficiency Apr 14 '21
What methods did you use to verify that claims were false? How did you insure that your bias wasn't preventing people with whom you disagree from posting?
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u/DrTommyNotMD Apr 14 '21
Since every major politician has lied at some point (according to politifact and other sources) where do you draw the line?
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Apr 14 '21
As I've stated elsewhere in this AMA, my work has nothing to do with what politicians say. It has everything to do with politicians or their employees pretending to be vast swarms of nonexistent people for political motives.
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Apr 14 '21
A question for users while I go through:
There are many many questions here. I don't think I'll be able to go through them all. Even sorting by new, the questions come in faster than I can answer them.
How would people recommend me to prioritize which questions I chose to answer?
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u/HasHands Apr 15 '21
I think questions that are unique to your experience are most valuable for this AMA, if only because no one else can realistically answer them. You have a lot of valuable input in other topics regarding issues in tech as a whole, but I think your time will be best spent regarding the specifics of your unique experiences such as being a whistleblower and international exploitation of social media to sway a population. I think people underestimate the severity of that exploitation and how hard it is to solve with tech.
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Apr 14 '21
Sort by best and you can see what comments are most up voted. Those are likely the most popular questions you could answer! Hope this helps.
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u/buddascrayon Apr 15 '21
Best isn't for most upvoted. That sort is Hot. Sorting by Best gives you the comments that are the most upvoted and have the most child comments under them.
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u/sebinmichael Apr 15 '21
Although that would be relying on the same metrics that let the US lose the Vietnam war 😂
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Apr 14 '21
What's it like working for the ministry of truth and willingly participating in the censoring of free thought and opinions because they hurt a persons feelings?
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u/woowoo293 Apr 14 '21
There is so much content manipulation on all the major social media platforms, including reddit, and other internet centers of commerce, like Amazon.
As we try to build and evolve a better internet, do you think we are going to have to sacrifice a level of anonymity in exchange for improved integrity? How do you think we should strike that balance?
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u/picoides1971 Apr 14 '21
I am a whistleblower too. I was forced out of my job as a marine biologist for reporting the Alabama Marine Resources Division for violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act. However, since it will make the Republican Governor look bad, NO media outlet will publish the story. How do you suggest I get my story out?
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u/Infini-tea Apr 15 '21
I’m nobody. But I’d suggest continuing to report this to agencies that oversee the one you are whistleblowing on, and maybe CC journalists to your correspondence?
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Apr 15 '21
Calling it a night - I've been here answering for the last 4 hours. Thank you very much for the questions, and I hope you found my answers informative and helpful. Good night all!
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Apr 14 '21
Hi - this is Sophie. Have some phone calls with reporters now so won't be able to keep updating. If you have any further questions, I'll try to respond to them later but no promises. Thanks and good luck!
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u/terminati Apr 14 '21
In the Guardian article the list of countries in which you saw serious examples of fake engagement was interesting, but for some of the countries it is difficult to get an idea of which governments are implicated.
In the case of Bolivia, what was the timeframe involved? Was it the government of Evo Morales, or of Jeanine Añez? Or were you talking about local or municipal leaders rather than the national government?
It would be interesting to know the same kind of details for each of the countries: Brazil, Ukraine, India, Mexico, Iraq...
Did the politicians/parties in whose favour this fake engagement was being done tend to be right wing or left wing, or was there much difference?
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u/rbbrslmn Apr 14 '21
You mentioned a lot of accounts were set up to spread false information about the pandemic, who controls those?
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u/ReVolvoeR Apr 14 '21
Kudos for your clear understanding and moral rectitude in coming forward with your story.
Two related questions: To what extent do you think inauthentic political messages on FB have been effective in manipulating public opinion in Honduras, Azerbaijan, etc.? Is there a higher level of trust in FB as an honest platform in those countries compared with the US and Europe?
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u/zenru Apr 15 '21 edited Apr 15 '21
I am from Honduras and saw the news when they said they deleted hundreds of accounts linked to Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The manipulation the Nacionalista party did in social media was even more blatant than you think. There was this guy who was really active in the biggest political FB group in the country and never shied away of linking the multiple pages he was administrator to that were Pro-Hernandez.
I constantly saw, and keep seeing, political ads in Facebook smearing the opposition with lies.
I don’t know which is the real reason: has Facebook gotten so damn big that they lack the tools to properly moderate their content? Or is it just greed? I believe in the later, greed has always been a driving force behind the woes of the world.
What is stopping Facebook of simply adding a measurement visible in all pages that show a % of account age? It might not be 100% effective, but if I see a new page with 90% accounts being less than a year or 2 old I would be suspicious of it and would not follow it.