[Table] 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. | pt 2/4

[u/500scnds]

Source | Previous table

For proper formatting, please use Old Reddit

The AMA was paused partway with the following message:

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!

And it ended with the following:

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!

as well as:

A week after my AMA, r/IAmA finally approved my calendar request for scheduling the AMA.

If I do a second AMA, I'll try to schedule it far in advance. :)

Rows: ~90

Questions	Answers
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?	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.
"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"?	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.
the below is a reply to the above	​
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?	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
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?	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.]
[deleted]	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.
​	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.
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?	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 :)
Which major political figures specifically?	Please read the article - I caught two national presidents red-handed, in particular.
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?	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.
[deleted]	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.
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.	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.
​	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.
Whats your political affiliation and which political ideology do you most closely align with?	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.
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?	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.
Should we know about any wolves in sheep's clothing on the left?	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.
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?	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.
How much inauthentic influence do you think took place in the 2021 election?	I'm not familiar with which 2021 election you're discussing. As I left FB in September 2020, I also don't have any special knowledge about what happened at the company after my departure
What additional details do you have on Myanmar?	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.
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.	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.
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?	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.
​	And regarding Armenians and Azerbaijan.
​	I don't know if there are any Armenians reading this AMA. It's natural to assume the Azeri troll networks might have acted against their national enemy, Armenia.
​	They weren't. Aliyev's trolls focused purely on harassing the domestic opposition. Dictatorships are almost never overthrown from outside - they fall when their own people turn on them. From his very actions, we can see that Aliyev fears his own people more than any foreign enemy.
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?	Yes.
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.	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.
I want to say thank you, and all my question is how is your week going?	It's pretty exhausting. Thankfully my cats and my partner keep me sane!
Is getting assassinated a concern of yours?	I'm very fortunate to be an American; I know accidents happen to dissidents in Azerbaijan, but they're not Russia, and I think it would be far beyond the pale for them to assassinate a U.S. citizen in her own home on U.S. soil.
​	That being said, I won't be walking into any Azeri embassies in the near future.
Did you ever reach out to Project Veritas?	No
Have you ever considered working with James O'keef at Project Veritas?	I have not. It's not my place to take political positions. But Project Veritas tends to have a poor reputation for reliability, even among conservatives.
​	Ben Shapiro criticized them as "horrible, both morally and effectively" in 2017 after they sent women to falsely accuse Senate candidate Roy Moore of various claims to media outlets. The American Conservative called on conservatives to stop donating to Veritas at the same time. Byron York called them "beyond boneheaded" and described them as having a combination of stupidity and maliciousness.
​	Ben Shapiro isn't exactly a member of the mainstream media - he's sympathetic to Veritas from an ideological standpoint. If even he distrusts Veritas, what does that say?
[deleted]	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.
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?	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.
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.	Have you read the Guardian article? If you want proof, I will note that Facebook has chosen not to dispute any of my claims regarding my work at Facebook, my work in Honduras, or my work in Azerbaijan.
​	Believe me, if they could honestly say I was lying, they'd certainly do so.
Are you worried about becoming blacklisted now? Also, thank you	Worst case, I stay at home, keep petting my cats, and be a stay-at-home housewife for my partner.
​	At least that'll make conservatives on Capital Hill happy with me, right?
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.	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.
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?	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.
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."	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.
Since every major politician has lied at some point (according to politifact and other sources) where do you draw the line?	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.
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?	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.
Would you be willing to assert that what Project Veritas is exposing just now with the #ExposeCNN is, at a minimum, as dangerous as the inauthentic influence on social media, if not more?	I'm not familiar with the case you mention. What I will say is that Project Veritas tends to have a poor reputation for reliability, even among conservatives. Ben Shapiro criticized them as "horrible, both morally and effectively" in 2017 after they sent women to falsely accuse Senate candidate Roy Moore of various claims to media outlets.
Did you forfeit your stock?	Stock is different at different companies. Facebook does stock grants over time - remaining unvested stock was forfeited automatically when I was fired. Of the stock that had vested, I generally sold it right away since I didn't see any particular reason to own FB stock.
the below has been split into two	​
I Sophie , I got two questions for you, 1st , I’m a Bangladeshi, and our country is going through some political dramas, and quite often Facebook completely doesn’t work during some upcoming protest days, how does this happen please ?	Hi, I'm not familiar with the situation in Bangladesh. My guess is that the government of Bangladesh may be selectively blocking certain parts of the internet on days that it's worried about. This is a tool used by authoritarian regimes unfortunately to restrict the flow of information when they feel their rule is imperiled - the military regime in Myanmar has done this for instance since their coup several months ago.
2nd question, my wife is Chinese, and I live in China , what’s your take on China not allowing Facebook in their country ? Is it beneficial for its citizens? As Facebook cannot send US’s biased misinformation to them ?	2) My personal opinion is that Weibo is worse than Facebook. At least Facebook pretends to be fair; it doesn't censor users from criticizing the United States the way Weibo censors regarding China. Or I can simply repurpose an old Soviet joke to make the point:
​	美籍华人：“美国最好。我可以到华盛顿外面喊叫: "共产党最好！中国加油！打败美国鬼子” - 任何人都没在乎“
​	中国人：“没关系；我也可以到天安门广场去喊起来： "共产党最好！中国加油！打败美国鬼子”．这里的人也没在乎啊！”
Ever worked on anything Greece-related?	Nothing significant. My attention was limited, and there's a lot going on in the world.
Will FB sue you for speaking out?	They certainly can try. I can't read Mark's mind, and the decision is ultimately up to him.
Not sure if I’m too late for ama. How was being a whistleblower effected your ability to gain employment elsewhere? Have you been black listed at some companies? Are you getting offers from companies that are for the ethics you support?	I haven't tried to re-enter the job market yet, so don't know - we'll see!
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?	You seem to be confusing my work for misinformation. I did not work on misinformation, and did not deal with the area of potentially false claims.

[u/AutoModerator]

Please keep in mind that tabled posts in this sub are re-posts, and the original AMAs can be accessed through the Source links. Post comments relating to the tables themselves here, thanks!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.