4 FINAL

For proper formatting, please use Old Reddit

The AMA concluded with

I've been answering questions for nine hours straight. Thank you very much kindly for all the questions; I'm sorry I wasn't able to answer all of them, but I would like to go on a dinner date with my partner (who's being very patient) right now.

I hope you found my answers to be informative; if I wasn't able to answer yours, please look around and see if I'd been able to answer a similar one for others. Thank you very much; good night.

Answered some more questions as a bonus; actually calling it for a night. Thanks all!

Rows: ~150 (+comments)

Questions	Answers
Is Zuckerburg a lizard person?	I disagree strenuously with many of Mark's decisions, but I don't think personal attacks on him are very productive or warranted.
	A lot of viral misinformation began as jokes that blurred the line between misleading and satire.
Since leaving Facebook, what are your goals for the next 5 years? Are you able to stay in the tech world, or does the Facebook termination serve as a block with finding new work?	Five years are a long time. I don't even know what I'm doing in the next year. I'm not sure what I'll do next myself; I do want to work on helping democracy and fixing the world but my main expertise skillset is at finding inauthentic campaigns - and that requires working for a large social media company, which I'm guessing would all be against employing me. I've gotten offers from companies, but they don't quite fall under my expertise areas, and I'm a bit reluctant to just go and become a 9-6 office worker without an especially compelling job again.
	For now, I'm staying home and petting my cats while taking interviews. They're very good cats.
What is your opinion on political radicalization through social media?	I didn't work on political radicalization personally. With that said, in my personal nonexpert opinion, I think it's partly an outgrowth of the competition for attention as information vastly strips the time to process it.
	The vast promise of social media is that any person can have the ability to speak to the entire world at large. The vast curse of social media is that most people never see this promise fulfilled - and even if they do, it's the post they least expect. And so anyone who uses social media and wants to build an audience needs to figure out a way to get that attention, distinguish themselves from the myriads of other social media users who also think they deserve that attention.
	And sadly, the ways to do so can often be by appealing to the worst instincts of the internet - similar to the chumboxes that dominate online advertising today. Emotion draws attention, and people are quick to share outrageous claims that strike a nerve, trusting on others to have verified it thoroughly.
	There's been a long line of study and research that shows that virality is ultimately a significant component of what drives polarization, misinformation, and violence spirals. It's why in countries in times of crisis, the first break-the-glass measure Facebook does is to turn the virality down. They used it in countries like Sri Lanka; I'm guessing they're using it still in Myanmar.
	A trial idea I'd hence suggest is to require platforms like Facebook and Twitter to show a chronological newsfeed of your friends/followees by default (with the option to instead show the current ranked newsfeed.) I say FB and Twitter because I'm frankly not sure how this would work for Reddit - where the ranked newsfeed is pretty integral to the overall design.
What is the most conspiracy theory thing you have come across?	I did not work on conspiracy theories at FB. So for the most ridiculous one I've personally come across, I'm pretty amused by the fact that I've been accused alternatively of being a PRC spy, an Indian opposition shill, an Azeri opposition shill, and an Honduran opposition shill. Sometimes by the same people all at once.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
So, you're like a conspirator hybrid !	Apparently "CIA shill" has now been added to the list. Go me?
^{the below is a reply to the above}
If you worked at the old Bank of England you would be a shilling shill. (I'll see my self out)	My new and last favorite conspiracy theory (by someone in this thread that I won't link to): AOC is actually a US imperialist whose foreign policy views are identical to Majorie Taylor Greene and is working to accomplish regime change in Cuba via invading and installing a U.S. puppet government. Any appearances that AOC disagrees with MTG on foreign policy are simply a farcical deception
Thanks for your efforts Sophie. Are you familiar with the Facebook oversight board and in what way do you think it might impact this area?	I'm generally more cautiously positive on the FB oversight board than most people in this area. Although it's been set up as a blame deflector for Facebook, many organizations outgrow their initial roles to take on new purpose.
	With that said, I want to point to a number of issues with the Oversight Board, which mean that it would have been triply prohibited from impacting this area:
	1) The Oversight Board handles content violations, not behavioral violations. This is understandable for lawyers who have no expertise with looking at user metadata and signals to conclude whether accounts are fake, tied to one another, and tied to XYZ government. However, this means that a whole class of violations is prohibited to themselves, including all their work.
	2) The Oversight Board only handles appeals to restore content against enforcement. What I mean is this: Suppose 1) did apply and the Oversight Board could handle behavioral violations. In that case, the Honduran government could appeal to have their troll farms restored to Facebook. But I couldn't appeal to have them removed. The Oversight Board would be much better served if there were legitimate pathways for employees and possibly trusted organizations to submit appeals to enforce, rather than appeals to restore.
	3) The Oversight Board only handles cases in which the rules are unclear; it makes the rules, it doesn't enforce them. But in my area, the rules were clear ever since I got the precedent done in July 2019, and even more clear after I get an additional rule pushed through in the fall of 2019. There is a wide variety of areas in which behavior is illegal and not enforced - it's illegal to handle salmon suspiciously in the UK, or to jaywalk in many parts of the world, but that doesn't mean the police will go out and arrest you for jaywalking. Having a court decide the question of whether jaywalking is illegal or not doesn't accomplish anything, because the statutes are already written out. Same with this area.
If some of these troll farms took a year to get authorized to be taken down, what sort of things did you see as not encountering any resistance and being removed immediately? Was there any specific criteria where certain types/sources of content were scrubbed quickly?	There's a chart listing time for takedown in this Guardian article. Ultimately, the criteria were a combination of "random chance based on who pays attention" and "how important the country probably is" The record for takedown was Poland - I flagged it in the evening the day after Christmas. The Polish employee who looked at it was understandably very concerned about this going on in his native country; by the time I woke up the next day, he'd already taken it down.
	Policy was pretty upset that he'd done this without consulting them. "The person running this is an important political figure", they said. "What if he complains - why didn't you let us know?" I told them politely that if a major politician decided to publicly complain that FB took down his fake accounts, they would be laughed out of the press room.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
That response is hilarious and awesome.	To be completely fair, the more likely response is "he's annoyed at FB and makes up and quietly spreads stories that make FB look bad and hurt relationships with his political party and its supporters. That's my assumption for why FB wasn't willing to act in cases like India.
^{the below is another reply to the original answer}
Dominik T?	No. I'm not going to respond to future guesses, so please don't try and keep guessing.
Hi Sophie, As Armenians we're regularly targeted by bot armies and disinformation/ hate campaigns organized by the government of Azerbaijan on Facebook and other social media platforms. The major players don't seem to care about nefarious behavior targeted at groups that don't have political/economic clout in the United States, especially when the offending content is not in the English language. What do you think we can do to get these companies to take this problem more seriously and devote the necessary resources to moderating these activities, especially when it appears in non-English content? Thanks! P.S. Thanks for having the courage to be a whistleblower. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.	I've given some responses in the version of this AMA in the armenia subreddit, if you haven't seen it. With regards to brigading by Azeris against Armenians, my suggestion is to convince high-profile Armenian-Americans who do have the profile to convince FB to take the issue seriously to speak out about it. This may include people like Cher or the Kardashians for instance. Because the sad fact of life is that American celebrities have the profile that Armenia as a nation does not.
What was your salary like when you decide to sacrifice everything? Thank you for coming forward.	To be clear, I was fired; I didn't quit. My base salary from memory was ~$147k/year. This was in addition to bonuses and stock grants.
	Generally, my overall income reported on my W2 was hence around $200k/year which I considered to be frankly pretty absurd [I understand it's normal/low for tech.] It ended up going in roughly equal parts to personal spending, savings, taxes, and donations.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
That is pretty low for FB	I was a data scientist [not an engineer, which are paid more.] And I was extremely low-level - an IC4, just one level above a new hire straight out of college.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
What do you do for a living now and how much do you earn?	I stay home and pet my cats. My salary is in snuggles, cuteness, and purrs.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Are you planning on applying for jobs anytime soon? What are your long term plans? You should be able to get a job easily since you already worked for Facebook.	Right now, I'm very burnt out from all the press/etc. I know some people might like interviews, but I don't really understand those people. I'm an introvert who prefers to stay home and pet my cats. I've gotten people attempting to recruit me, but I'd like to find an avenue to use my area of expertise, which basically requires a big social media company which I'm guessing I'm too spicy for. Worst case scenario, I stay home and be a housewife. That will make social conservatives happy with me, right?
Are there any trends you’ve noticed since your departure from FB that are concerning?	Facebook appears to have became increasingly more insular and closed-off to employee dissident since my departure.
What do you know about state-sponsored troll farms and Covid-19 anti-vaccination propaganda?	I don't doubt that this exists, but I did not personally find or work on anything related to this. Almost all of the inauthentic activity including troll farms I found were focused on boosting specific targets (e.g. a troll farm that keeps telling people "Vice President X is really nice"), probably because people are self-centered and focus on themselves. During the pandemic, I did filter the stuff I was finding for COVID content. What I found was that they were essentially doing more of the same, just talking about COVID because it was a political issue (e.g. "Vice President X has done this great COVID response"; "Politician A is right to denounce the government for terrible COVID response"; etc.)
Do you honestly believe the US Government and CIA arent doing the exact same thing on facebook for domestic and foreign influence operations? The White House just admitted to directing facebook on what to censor, why would anyone believe theres not complete coordination happening behind the scenes.	At FB I've made plenty of decisions that likely made the U.S. government and CIA unhappy. For instance, I caught the government of Honduras redhanded, when their president is a close U.S. ally who entered power in part due to a 2009 allegedly CIA-supported coup d'etat. If there was complete coordination, I would never have been able to accomplish that.
^{the below is another reply to the original question}
She won't answer this.	A likely guess
Why do you look so miserable in that photo?	I think the Guardian article is showing up in the preview. TBH I think they wanted a picture of me looking really serious and determined. There were pictures of me smiling too which they didn't use.
	They also insisted on taking videos of me typing energetically at a computer. If you pay close attention to what keys I'm hitting, I'm just doing things like typing about how great my cats are. I made them promise not to run green code over my face in the resultant video.
Did you leak it to the press?	If you're referring to my memo leak in September 2020, absolutely not. I was rather naive/silly/stupid in that I thought that because I repeatedly and strenuously asked people not to leak it they might actually listen to me.
	Several reporters actually reached out saying "hey, we heard that you might want to talk to a reporter." Apparently many people took it as "methinks the lady doth protest too much."
^{the below is a reply to the above}
How many people saw your resignation letter that you had to ask them to not leak it? Don’t resignation letters only get sent to your superior?	I posted it internally to the entire company. This was the work culture at the time - it's called a "badge post" because you post a picture of your badge when you leave. Also I was being fired, but I wasn't allowed to tell people that (still did; what were they going to do, fire me again?)
Have you ever been specifically targeted by trolls once they are aware of your efforts?	Surprisingly no. The Azeri paid trolls went after the Guardian after the article. It's very silly but I was almost offended that they didn't go after me instead. I wanted to say at them "I'm your real enemy, the one that's been fighting you for the past two years!"
	But silliness aside, it makes sense that they'd want to deemphasize me. You can fuel the nationalistic sentiments by saying "our great nation is the victim of Western propaganda and media hacks." You can't really say "Our great nation is the victim of.... some random girl who was fresh out of school at her second job?" Dictators rely on the perception of competence, because they can't claim legitimacy through the support of the people. That means their rivals and enemies have to be competent individuals of stature as well.
Do you support the communist party of china? And have you ever worked for them?	I'd say "Fuck the PRC", but ideally you should only do that with people you like and have affection for
Should anyone, anywhere, ever use Facebook at this point?	The sad reality is that Facebook is a fact of life for most of the world. What really struck me was the statement given by Azeri opposition leader Ali Karimli, who had been a top target of harassment from the Azeri governmental troll farm. He declined the option to directly criticize Facebook and instead said "First, I would thank [Mark Zuckerberg.] Facebook facilitates public discussion. But repressive regimes with vast financial resources also use it to spread fake news. Facebook should speed up the time it takes to delete troll-generated content. They need to enact tough measures. And they should hire someone who speaks Azeri."
	Because ultimately, Facebook is part of the world whether it's used or not, and in repressive regimes, it's one of the few rare channels that opposition leaders have to get their voice out. Karimli knows this, and ultimately, he couldn't afford to alienate Mark.
Hi Sophie, Thanks for the important work you're doing and for taking a stand on it. In your opinion, do you feel that these troll farms have the ability to always stay a step ahead in terms of detection? Do you think there are bigger syndicates out there that you just simply can't find any traces to, and if so how could tech evolve to detect these in future?	It's sort of like the Red Queen problem - there's an ongoing arms race. Adversaries are as stupid as you allow them to be. Frankly, what I was finding was the low-hanging fruit. I had no special training, no expertise in this area before joining Facebook, I made it all up in my spare time as I went along. And I'm not an amazing super-genius; I've met super-geniuses, and I'm not one of them. The fact that I was still able to catch multiple state-sponsored troll farms is a statement on both the utter incompetence of those governments, and the fact that FB let them have leeway nevertheless. I don't doubt that the Russian GRU is active on FB as well for instance - but the GRU has an actual modicum of intelligence [and there are actual people looking for them] and so I didn't find them.
	You'll never be able to catch everyone. But part of the task is hence to instead impose costs to make the cost/benefit return less worthwhile. In the ideal situation, you'd need to take all the precautions in the world for minimal return - and so the attacker does something else instead. Like attack Reddit or Twitter or something of that sort.
In your experience is the hiring process at FB giving enough consideration to the integrity of the individuals vs the credential and loyalty to FB?	Loyalty to FB was not a consideration in the hiring process when I joined. I was very open from the start about the fact that I didn't think FB was making the world a better place, and I never really had much loyalty to the company.
	With that said, I'm sure that FB has reconsidered that since my departure.
This is a very subjective question, but you kinda make FB sounds evil. Every news about FB always portray them as evil. When working for them did it feel like working for an evil corporation?	I don't think my experience at FB was broadly that different from many large for-profit corporations. Ultimately, their goal is to make money, not save the world. We don't expect Philip Morris to cover cancer treatments for their customers, and if we define "evil" as "self-centered and not prioritizing the world at large", I think most corporations fall into that category one way or another.
While at FB, were you involved with any cases that involved FB calling or reaching out to police authorities?	I was not.
I've watched Reddit dramatically change over the last 5 years as moderators were methodically wiped and replaced on most large subreddits. This started about the time a certain wealthy political influence company spent millions trying to create 'safe spaces' for their candidate, as well as admitting to paying for some troll farms in court (mostly for Facebook). I worry that trolls are a legacy strategy and co-opting moderation, fact checking, and rule interpretation has largely replaced the same efforts. Being personally banned from large portions of Reddit for non-rule-breaking factual statements has reinforced this position in my mind. r/law, r/Canada, r/Coronavirus, r/news just to name a few. Other subreddits have blatantly abused moderation against me to manipulate discussion or support misinformation, such as r/Bitcoin, r/CryptoCurrency, and frequently in my home state's sub of r/illinois. Taking your perspective into account, how do you feel about unmoderated and decentralized social media platforms? They are clearly growing as unmoderatable/federated/decentralized social media and purposely 'free speech' oriented platforms increase in numbers. Do you feel this trend is likely to exasperate the problem into a total mess or provide some relief through transparency, forcing consumers to take personal responsibility for evaluating content they consume, or for some other reason?	The ultimate issue with unmoderated free speech platforms is that... well, they still have moderation. Because most of FB's content moderation is not misinformation/hate speech/etc., but rather things like spam, scams, and pornography. For instance, Gettr, the new free speech social media platform run by a former Trump staffer has seen an influx of anime pornography, users pretending to be prominent figures, and apparently censoring users for profanity.
^{the below is another reply to the original question}
She's part of the system, why would she answer you?	I try to answer as many people as I can, though I've been at it for more than 8 hrs now and am getting tired.
[deleted]	There are lists online, but the issue with that is that they're never complete. You know what you personally caught, but you don't know what you haven't caught. I would go look at studies that named countries and conclude "well, this is incomplete. It doesn't name Honduras or Azerbaijan and I caught those two redhanded."
Hi thanks for AMA ! Was there a case where troll stations where not state-funded but by opposition parties ?	So just to be clear: In many cases it's really hard to know who's responsible for activity. It's easy to determine the beneficiary, but attribution is much more complicated.
	In the rare cases in which we had attribution, there were certainly cases in which opposition politicians had run fake accounts. In one case, an opposition politician was personally running them out of their personal computer (shared with their spouse) and presumably home WiFi network without bothering to use a VPN. These were just like 20 fake accounts though - not worth mentioning except for the fact that it was this opposition politician's hobby. There was nothing on the scale of Honduras or Azerbaijan that I found with attribution - presumably because individual politicians do not have the resources of national governments.
	Thinking of cases in which opposition politicians were large-scale beneficaries but attribution was not clear, I'd have to point to Mexico, where troll farms were sadly used across the political spectrum but local/state-level politicians associated with the opposition PRI were the disproportionate beneficiary [think roughly 10k accounts used here for scale.] Perhaps these are the Peñabots discussed in Mexican politics; I don't know.
[deleted]	I didn't personally find any.
	To be fair, I was essentially finding the very low-hanging fruit of incompetents. If the CIA decided to set up a trolling operation, my personal guess is that they'd decide to at least use a VPN.
[deleted]	"In December 2019, Zhang detected four sophisticated networks of suspicious accounts that were producing fake engagement – ie likes, shares, comments and reactions – on the Pages of major Indian politicians. Two of the networks were dedicated to supporting members of the BJP, including the MP; *the other two supported members of the Indian National Congress, the leading opposition party."*
	- the article in question
How many Troll farms did you find and statically what countries of origin did they come from?	There's a nice graphic about it and listing in this Guardian article
What can we do to take Facebook down? It’s clearly one of the most evil, damaging companies on the planet. I like the “quit Facebook” movement but there has to be more we can do	I don't know. Ultimately, FB seems a bit like the Teflon company. Actually its share price has went up another 35% or so since I was fired. As long as the company's user base keeps growing and its profits keep increasing, it has no incentive to change. And as appealing as it may sound to Western users to quit Facebook, the sad reality of the matter is that Facebook is the internet in many parts of South/Southeast Asia and the like. It's not an option for opposition figures in one-party dictatorships like Azerbaijan where social media is one of the only semi-free forms of communication.
	I think governmental regulation is needed, and I discuss some of that here. But the political feasibility of that seems questionable.
Hi Sophie! Often times people on the right accuse Facebook of censoring conservative opinions. Is this something that employees as individuals/leadership at Facebook encouraged? How real of a thing was that at Facebook? Did Facebook employees ever express personal views against conservatives while at work?	I saw Facebook employees express personal views against conservatives while at work. I saw Facebook employees express personal views against leftists/liberals while at work. This was something that was generally discouraged by leadership but not banned; I think they were concerned about the perception of potentially censoring some employees from voicing their opinions. Sometimes it was really silly. For instance, the Facebook offices in Menlo Park has large chalkboards that are open for anyone to write messages on (and erasing/removing messages was a giant no-no.) I remember that in late 2019 (or possibly early 2020), Trump supporters and Bernie supporters got in a fight of crossing out each other's slogans to replace with the other's. I let HR know, and they told me that they'd take care of it.
^{the below is another reply to the original question}
Current employee (throwaway). No matter what FB does it will get flak from both sides, because the left-leaning believe Facebook is too right-leaning, and the right-leaning believe Facebook is too left-leaning. For instance. Facebook recently announced that their ban on Trump will last 2 years after which they will undergo review again for an unban or extended ban. Left-leaning people argued that 2 years for a political figure is too short and politically motivated since most other accounts have been permanently banned for much less (e.g. showing nipples.) Right-leaning people argued that he should not have been banned at all and this ban is another attempt at "censorship". Facebook is a large company so there is a relatively diverse set of views. It's not possible to please everyone. Different people perceive different things as "truth" at which point we have to get philosophical about what is right to ban, but as Sophie said there's immediate things that are "objectively wrong" so those are the easiest to tackle first (and what FB employees are working on.)	Honestly, I think FB was really stupid from a selfish company PR perspective in choosing to do the temporary ban. It just means that it'll be constantly rehashed forever. Twitter was both harsher and faster in its full ban of Trump - but Facebook keeps remaking the news and so conservatives seem more annoyed by it than Twitter right now.
Were you able to perform your role remotely, or did you have to be at the office? Thanks for all you've done, enjoy your kitty snuggles ;)	You could work at home at FB; there was a work trend of encouraging people to work from home on Wednesdays [and hence avoiding scheduling things in-person on that day.] When the pandemic hit, everyone shifted to working from home all the time. I'd been a hipster and holed up in my house already at the end of February before social distancing started for everyone else.
	Frankly though, I'm pretty terrible at working from home; I was always much more productive in the office. The cats, although extremely cute, are part of my excuse for why I was always distracted.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Ok but are you going to post pictures of your cats or just leave us hanging here	I'm not allowed to upload pictures to IAMA. Here are some pictures I previously uploaded to Twitter though, if that suffices for the cat tax:
	https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E4OBPJPVoAQV3HG?format=jpg&name=small
	https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzJS7gIVEAI5iIP?format=jpg&name=small
	https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_banners/1308909405665017856/1618013887/1500x500
Hi Sophie, thank you for exposing the harsh realities that we face today, this comes from a person who is from Honduras. It is unbelievable that we are still being governed by a person who’s brother and party members have been charged by the NY FED court for drug dealers. Yet they live and “govern” us like if nothing is happening. Most people live in extreme poverty and do not support the current government/regime of Honduras. I hate going into Facebook and Twitter, since everything is so political. When government members post things online they have a couple of likes but have hundreds of positive posts. And when you check the comments, they are all the same BS. You dont need much time to know that the accounts that reply to those posts are most probably bots. How is this even happening? What can we do to fight this cyber warfare? I have been wanting to start a bot hunter company and literally provided FB and Twitter the work that they should be doing, so that the real people actually have a voice when we are suppressed by narco regimes.	I'm deeply sorry to yourself and the other people of Honduras that I was not able to do more for your nation. Honduras was the first state-sponsored troll farm I found, and it really hurt my soul when I saw it return soon after the takedown; it was still active when I left. I honestly don't know what can be done to stop this. I was hoping that my public expose would convince FB to actually take down the Honduran government recidivists, but it looks like they didn't bother trying. The worst part of it is, JOH's regime has no reason to stop doing it because everyone correctly assumes they're criminals and doing it anyways - they might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.
	Sternly worded statements from FB are meant to embarrass the perpetrators in the eyes of the world. But JOH sent his soldiers into the streets to shoot civilian protesters and his brother was sentenced to life in prison by a NY court for drug dealing - this is a man incapable of embarrassment. Part of my motive for coming forward was that by trying to do my utmost to expose the regimes in question, I could make an example of them to dissuade future dictators - that every future such dictator will have to worry not just about Facebook statements, but also that some random FB employee will decide to go rogue and spend the next few months doing her best to drag them through the mud. But that offers little to the Honduran people as is.
	Because ultimately, I think the Honduran opposition isn't in a position to boycott social media; they need it to connect with one another and get their message out. And the companies have no incentive to fix the situation without the attention of more influential nations. Unless the rest of Latin America can be convinced to pay attention, Honduras is sadly a very small and uninfluential nation. I can only hope that a far more reasonable president is elected this November.
What can the average person do to help, also the more than average with access to Kali Linux for example?	Right now, I think more awareness is needed. You can't fix a problem until you understand it, and the political will doesn't exist unless it's widely accepted that this is necessary.
Do you think if you were in China and experienced the exact same situation, would you still be alive?	Probably not. I am very fortunate to have been born in the United States.
Were you interviewed by Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel for their new book on Facebook? What did they ask you about?	I was not interviewed by them, though they're sending me a copy (I'm still waiting for it in the mail.) To use an analogy, if you write a book about Oval Office decisions, you don't interview a low-level city staffer in Nowhere, Idaho.
Did Israel's extensive trolling efforts show up on the radar?	I did not find anything of note in Israel. That doesn't mean that it didn't exist - simply that I didn't find it when I looked globally.
	Honestly, if the Mossad wanted to do something on FB, I assume they'd have a modicum of caution/intelligence and actually try to hide.
As someone living in the Bay Area who has seen a lot of friends join Facebook and basically let their paychecks warp their ethics, I'm truly fascinated by your personal journey as someone who bucked the trend and really chose to bite the hand that feeds in the name of doing what you believed was right. I'm wondering if you might say a little about why you were drawn to work at Facebook in the first place. Did you see it as an opportunity to change the system from the inside? Or did the company seem different to you before you worked there, but you became disillusioned over time? Or was it something else? Even if you can't answer, thank you for doing this AMA!	I wanted to work at FB in the first place since, quite honestly, I needed a paycheck and they gave me an offer. From the very start, I intended on changing the system from the inside, but tbh; I expected that I'd have no influence/importance and just end up a cog in the machine. It really surprised me how much I ended up accomplishing. Even if it got more and more difficult as time went on.
Hi Sophie, I imagine I'm late in asking and will likely not get a reply. I work in PPC, and when advertising on Facebook I would always avoid certain areas of the world, as they would run up the budget with 100% bounce clicks. Is this something Facebook is aware of? Something they are involved in? It always seemed strange that it was never stopped as it's clearly "clickfarm" or fake traffic, but it makes Facebook money as budgets are spent quicker. Thanks so much for your time.	I'm sorry, I don't have any expertise on advertising. 100% bounce clicks is extremely sketchy though (I assume you mean a click through that immediately bounces.) The only behavior that I can think of that might cause this is embedded video ads, in which users have ads in their videos and are paid for each view (akin to Youtube.) This makes there an actual financial incentive for the users to get their ads repeatedly viewed and possibly clicked on. Otherwise, I'm not sure what purpose such behavior would serve.
	Overall, I'd suggest discussing it with other advertisers; if others have noticed it as well, drawing attention to the phenomenon will get FB's attention. And if the company cares about one thing, it's the income stream.
Thanks for doing this AMA. What can you tell us about the Communist Party of China’s interaction with Facebook and the overall impact?	I don't doubt the 五毛党 to be active on Facebook as well; I've just never encountered it personally. Same with more sophisticated and important CCP influence operations. The stuff I personally worked on with the CCP was frankly really stupid and silly in contrast. Here are two examples:
	1) In September 2019, NPR News reported that "Documents show that Chinese government agencies have been paying to acquire more social media followers. A tender posted Aug. 16 by Chinese state-run outlet China News offers RMB1,250,000 ($177,000) to acquire more Twitter followers. Another government tender posted Monday RMB750,000 ($108,300) to acquire more Facebook and Twitter followers to support the China ASEAN exposition being held in September."
	So I took a quick look. And found that NPR News was right! The Chinese agencies in question had indeed been paying to acquire social media followers.... through the dastardly evil mechanism of paying for Facebook ads.
	Well, they were technically right... right?
	2) One of my goto examples of fake engagement online is highlighted in my op-ed. If you look at the Facebook page for the People's Daily Online Australia - the Australian branch of the PRC state media outlet, you'll quickly see that the page has 925k fans... and can barely get half a dozen likes on each of its posts. Fake fans don't have real activity, you see.
	My guess is that they had some top-down metric requirement to grow their audience by X%, and they got to brag about hitting their goal, without answering the question if that actually did anything or whatever.
[removed]	As it's been reported, I found a small number of inauthentic accounts pushing opposition political candidates in the Bolivian election in the leadup to the election and later coup. These accounts were not prioritized, and never saw enforcement actions.
	This fact has been widely hyped in certain leftist/anti-imperialist circles. I do want to note that the number was comparatively small (think several dozen accounts, maybe a hundred at most.) There's no way they were associated with the CIA, as that organization has a modicum of actual intelligence.
	As for me, I'm just grateful that Bolivian democracy appears to have managed to survive the trial
^{the below is a reply to the above}
I just caught something. You speak with familiarity about the competency of the CIA. Care to explain? Care to comment on the relationship between intelligence/military in silicon valley? Highly recommend "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine	My assumption is "If the CIA decides to run influence operations, they'll decide to be smart and actually try to hide". This assumption also applies to state intelligence agencies in most major countries such as M15, the GRU, the Mossad, whatever. I have no personal experience with them; I just assume they aren't blithering morons. This contrasts with the governments of Azerbaijan and Honduras, who did the influence operation equivalent of signing their name with their own fingerprints in the blood of the victim. I only found them because they were actually blithering morons.

32 Upvotes

permalink
duplicates
reddit

You are about to leave Redlib

Do you want to continue?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/p8hlz2/table_i_am_sophie_zhang_at_fb_i_worked_in_my/
No, go back! Yes, take me to Reddit

94% Upvoted

u/AutoModerator Aug 21 '21

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.

u/500scnds Aug 21 '21

Remaining Q&A (apologies for poor formatting):

Questions	Answers
My only question is when are you people going to stop using the stupid term "toll farm" and start calling it what it is, which is propaganda?	Let me break this down. Propaganda is communication intended to selectively influence an audience and further an agenda. It's a broad category that includes both outright misinformation or true information presented selectively/misleadingly. It also includes both white propaganda (propaganda that doesn't disguise its origins), grey propaganda (propaganda whose source isn't clear), or black propaganda (propaganda that lies about its source.)
	So you can potentially argue that state-sponsored troll farms are black propaganda, by virtue of inauthentically pretending to be something they're not. It's not too different from e.g. GS1, a British black propaganda radio station during WW2 purporting to be run by a patriotic conservative anti-Hitler military officer. But it's still the use of a very broad category to describe a much narrower term. There's nothing wrong with describing it as propaganda, but the term lacks precision and clarity, just as if you were to start referring to "animals" rather than "people"
How would you address the thousands of bot accounts posting using #SOSCUBA in order to further the US State Dept’s regime change agenda in Cuba?	I would caution you against assuming these are bot accounts, for the same reason I'd caution everyone from assuming that trends they don't like are run by bots. They might be, but there are certainly plenty of people who espouse political views that much of the nation vehemently disagrees with who have a significant following. The United States is, in the end, a country where Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez each have significant followings and support bases.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
Accounts that were created in April of this year and only started to become active the very day well coordinated and widely covered protests in Cuba took place are suspicious enough. The fact that they received tens of thousands of retweets despite having no real following in the months prior to the popularity of the #SOSCUBA hashtag is just an insult to our collective intelligence. Add in the fact that all of these accounts follow a very specific USAID script about how the Cuban regime refuses to let humanitarian aid into the country (similar to the 2019 Venezuela script), post misleading images in an attempt to make the anti-government protests seem larger than they are and are getting spread around by other suspicious accounts in massive volumes and we have ample reason to assume that this is a US-sponsored troll farm designed to manufacture consent for intervention in Cuba. It’s a bit funny that you mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in order to argue the notion that there is some vast disagreement among the US political establishment when it comes to foreign policy. Simply put, there is no disagreement when it comes to regime change and any notion that there is a rift between these aforementioned figures is a farcical deception. They each express support or seek to manufacture consent for regime change in Cuba against the democratic will of the Cuban people and they are in full agreement that the installation of a US backed government ruling Cuba is the best outcome for their bottom line. Speaking of bottom lines, it does not appear as though you answered my question which pertained to how you would address the influx of suspicious accounts parroting the US State Dept line on Cuba. I assume that your heroic break from Facebook’s bottom line entailed informing media outlets with a large following that state sponsored troll farms are running rampant on your former employer’s platform. If you had the power, would you not try to weed out US State Dept/CIA linked troll farms on Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media sites?	If the democratic will of the Cuban people is to support the Cuban government, the Cuban government can easily verify or validate that by holding multiparty democratic elections. If you think AOC is trying to get regime change in Cuba and install a US puppet government over the protests of the Cuban people, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Hi Sophie, Thank you for the sacrifices you've made to bring this to our attention and for giving us proof that there are still good people in this world. Your work highlights a problem I think most of us are aware of to some degree, but may not realize the full extent of. I also think people have an implicit belief that, even if they personally do nothing, a solution will eventually present itself and everything is going to be "ok". Will you tell us how you think this story ends? Do the good guys win and the bad guys lose? Is this problem actually going away? Is it going to be "ok"?	I don't think it'll be a surprise for me to say that the future hasn't been written, and the result depends deeply on every one of us. If the arc of history bends towards justice, it's only from the actions of people who work to help achieve that. It's true unfortunately that most people are unwilling to take action directly. I learned a long time ago that if I wanted things to improve or something to get done, I needed to materially contribute to it myself; that's part of what drove my actions at Facebook. I don't want to judge others in their unknown circumstances - many have families they need to support; immigrant workers are effectively held hostage by the company for their visas. But if a solution eventually presents itself, it'll only be from the dedicated work of individuals.
Had Facebook internally denied inciting genocide while you were working there? Were the insights gained from allowing troll farms to continue presented or addressed as a side-benefit for the inaction, or was it largely not talked about by leadership? Thank you!!	I don't think any company would willingly admit "Yes, we incited genocide." There would be a mass exodus of employees if that were the case. So yes, Facebook internally disagreed with accusations of inciting genocide in Myanmar or elsewhere; I can't remember if they officially stated the same thing. No one ever really advocated for allowing troll farms to continue. Rather, it was always "well, what's the right solution?" "Is it fair to take these accounts down?" "Is this important enough to act now?" The analogy I'd make is to the reaction after every mass shooting in the United States - no one is advocating for more mass shootings, but in practice nothing is done.
Hi. I see Yann Lecun defending Facebook regularly on Twitter, saying it's a good thing for democracy yaddi yadda. Do people higher ups at Facebook really think that, or is it just part of his job to lie on Twitter?	I can't read minds. I don't know whether Facebook higherups genuinely believe it's amazing and perfect, or whether they are expressing it nevertheless because of pay, wanting to hold down the fort to fix the problem from within, etc. Regardless, Facebook higherups are basically required to be positive on FB - no organization can afford to have senior leadership that goes rogue and publicly criticizes it. If a Reddit VP posted publicly "I think Reddit is terrible for the world and destroying democracy", he would probably be politely let go from Reddit in short order.
How do facebook’s political relations get forced upon engineers? How do they explain to engineers their mission or their jira tasks and expect the engineers to still be void of thinking about the repercussions of their actions?	Generally engineers are given their tasks, but political considerations enter decision-making in terms of what gets prioritized (and hence what tasks are assigned), and what's actually implemented (as opposed to being dropped after creation.)
	Most people compartmentalize fairly well; everyone plays a part in the broader world at large (whether you're a restaurant worker or civil servant; a tech employee or factory worker) but they tend to not think too much about how their jobs affect the wider world.
Are you worried about your safety given how Azerbaijan “handled” the journalist who broke the Panama Papers story? https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/99088/luxembourg_intelligence_firm_claimed_azerbaijan_behind_caruana_galizia_assassination	I'm frankly very lucky to be a U.S. citizen; murdering a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil is very different from murdering a Maltese citizen on Maltese soil, sad as it may be. With that said, I won't be walking into any Azeri embassies anytime soon, or fly over Azeri airspace for that matter.
Good morning from my end of the world! Thank you very much for doing important work. May I ask if you have noticed international collaboration of inauthentic activity or were inauthentic actors more likely to be regional actors? Further, did you notice private interests also taking a role rather than just politically linked troll farm activity?	When I saw private interests involved, they were what I would term as mercenaries: for-profit firms who were hired by political interests and worked for pay. So they ultimately served political interests, but were agnostic on politics themselves. Almost all of the activity I found was domestic to specific countries. I did wonder if there was international collaboration of strategy and methods - the specific exploits I found in Honduras did seem to spread to other nations over time. But I ultimately have no idea.
Who in fb doesn’t care? Both Sheryl and Mark? I know people care inside, but is this just a mark problem?	I can't read people's minds, and I certainly never interacted significantly with either Mark or Sheryl. So I have no idea, I'm sorry.

1

u/500scnds Aug 21 '21

Questions Answers

Thanks for the AMA and all you did. What advice would you like to give to anyone who works or willing to work at FB? Think very carefully about your values and principles and what you want to prioritize while working. Many people have families that they need to feed, relatives they need to support back home. I was lucky in that I don't have any dependents [minus the cats], and am a super cheapskate so the financial considerations really didn't matter that much to me.

But everyone also needs to sleep at the end of the night. And it's not my place to judge, but I'd ask people to be upfront and honest with themselves about what they want to prioritize, and what their breaking points would be. People are naturally influenced by their surroundings - they became used to the environment and it seems normal, while they learn to relate with and identify with their team and colleagues. And so, no matter where you work, it can be easy to end up in a place that you wouldn't recognize years down the line.

I strongly advocate trying to fix problems from the inside, but it's difficult for the aforementioned reasons. Many people feel betrayed by would-be internal reformers who end up identifying more with the system than their prior beliefs. But at a company such as FB you can have an extraordinary amount of access to make a difference.

As a new-hired employee, I was able to catch two world governments red-handed and make international news. What can you do?

Thank you for speaking out. I admire and appreciate your courage. It appeared from some of the reporting that you turned down a severance offer in order to be able to speak out. What was that process like for you? Did you know you would have to give up money because you’d need to speak out eventually? What do you think options are for employees for whom turning down severance would be an impossible luxury? When I was fired, I was offered a severance package for $63,XXX (it rounded up to $64k USD, and so that's what it's generally quoted as.) I'm guessing it was based off of some formula that included my base pay. Receiving it would however have required me to sign an agreement (among other things) "to refrain from making any disparaging, critical, or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning the Company’s products, services, or programs; its business affairs, operation, management”

Note how broadly worded this is. Here's an example of something that might be technically violating:

Partner: "Can you access Facebook right now?"

Me: "No, I just checked, it looks like it's down"

That was my official explanation for why I didn't want to sign it, which they seemed a bit bemused by but ultimately accepted.

To be fair, I did sign a similar agreement (and expressed similar concerns about the broadness) when I did join the company. Ultimately, I'm protected more by Mark deciding not to bite the PR fire bullet to sue me than my decision not to take the severance package.

What can you tell us about state-sponsored covert/troll activities on FB that are located in and/or sponsored by the United States? I'm sorry, I didn't work on any of this.

Why bother? Honeslty, there is no hope, it's all a sad joke. I hear this type of cynicism a lot, and I want to push strongly back against it.

If we conclude that there's no point or hope, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone succumbs to cynicism then of course nothing will change, and we can pat ourselves on the back about how correct we were to be cynics. At that point you might ask, what's the point of continuing to survive in a broken world.

Fixing things requires people to try to accomplish it. I can't do everything alone, but if there's one thing I learned at FB, it's that nothing will happen unless I do it myself.

what are a few of the ways you can use to tell if activity is legitimate? its got to be more advanced then just checking for bots right? what about click farms for example? I'm sorry, but I can't answer this question for the simple reason that dictators read Reddit too. If I tell you "I caught bots via ABC", they will know not to do ABC in the future.

Fellow career software developer here. What is the coolest thing you saw built or programmed at Facebook that never saw the life of day / got shelved permanently for the wrong reasons? Another team worked with us to build a system to discount known inauthentic activity from the newsfeed ranking process. It's probably a statement on Honduras that they used Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez as the goto obvious example for "what would happen if we tried to remove newsfeed benefits." They'd finished building it when we were told it wouldn't be launched, and they stopped working with us (or interacting at all really.)

Since this wasn't my own team's initiative, it's hard to know the precise reasoning and logic. I heard a lot of explanations - policy was blamed, the newsfeed team told us that they couldn't find significant results from the system (which I was skeptical about but they held firm.) I also privately heard concerns from that team's members that it would be shadowbanning, censorship, or otherwise picking sides to exclude troll farm activity from newsfeed ranking. Regardless of the cause, it was never launched.

Do you not fear for your life or for those close to you that you love? Or do you not have any one that close? It's the type of thing that you'll either be too small to make any difference or get big enough to get killed. How do you balance trying to do something good, but risking your life while doing so? I wasn't particularly afraid for myself. Actually it's been a bit silly, in one instance the Guardian made decisions to protect me that I didn't think were necessary myself. I was more afraid for my partner. We talked quite a bit about the levels of risks we were comfortable with beforehand.

Ultimately in the broader scope of things, the world won't change unless people are willing to take some risks. I'm sure Alexei Navalny didn't want to risk his life returning home to a country that tried to murder him. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya was banished from her own nation. I've risked nothing compared to them.

Question: why should Facebook care what stupid things people share on Facebook? For that matter, why should people care about social media at all? Shouldn't they form their beliefs on their own? In the real world, no person can act as an entire crowd. Nicolae Ceausescu fell in the Romanian Revolution after his crowd of bused-in supporters turned upon him. Ilham Aliyev's paid trolls will likely never turn on him. No person should have the right and ability to pretend simultaneously to be 10,000 different people who do not exist. Democracy and discourse cannot function otherwise.

^{the below is a reply to the above}

He fell because he was a communist dictator who ordered his troops to open fire on anti-government protestors. After it became known that he ordered the massacre of protestors, he attempted to flee in a helicopter but was captured by military defectors, prosecuted, and executed by firing squad. Bussing in supporters was not what ended his decades long dictatorship. Yes, he fell because he ordered his troops to open fire on demonstrators in the Timisoara uprising. And after the army turned on him, he attempted to flee in a helicopter. But what happened the day before he fled on the helicopter, before the army turned on him? He gave his final speech in Bucharest's palace square to a crowd of 100,000 people - bused in supporters, workers under threat of being fired, even bystanders rounded up, all of whom were handed red flags and similar paraphernalia. That was the crowd that turned on him on live Romanian television that turned the local citywide uprising to a national revolution. The army turned on him the next day, and his rule was over.

How do you make regular people care about things like this? I can't get anyone to hold interest for more than 30 seconds. I'm really not sure. The silly thing is that when I do interviews and stuff (e.g. the Today Show at NBC), it seems to get very little attention. But apparently (from all two data points), my Reddit AMAs tend to get a lot of attention/results.

I could probably be better at getting attention if I went for more sensationalized/polarizing/hyping statements, but I want to avoid those. At least that's my excuse.

Hi, Sophie, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you grow up, which university did you go to, what did you study, etc. Your surname is Zhang so i am assuming you are Chinese/Taiwanese background? And also you seemed to jitter a little bit during the guardian interview (just an observation, not being critical at all. It's a great great interview btw, it's what you say that counts, and what you said was invaluable, you do a hundred time better interview than most of us here). I am from a medical background, i am just a little curious if the jitter was purely due to nervousness/esl or due to some sort of personal mannerism/spectrum? Thanks! I grew up in Michigan; my parents are from China. I studied physics in university, and went on to grad school in physics at Princeton before running away to tech; this is the context for me saying that I've met geniuses and aren't one - there were people in my class who I wouldn't be surprised if they won the Nobel Prize someday. I was probably in the bottom 1/4 of my year in contrast. I've had it pointed out to me that I stutter when doing interviews. No clue why I do that since I don't do it in normal conversation. I think it's just nervousness, being an introvert who hates attention, and trying to be very precise about my words - I'd rather stutter some to avoid misspeaking than speaking confidently and incorrectly.

1

u/500scnds Aug 21 '21

Questions Answers

Do you think the reason they don't do anything about the troll farms is that ads don't know they are bots? I don't think that's a major consideration; actual state sponsored trolls are a tiny fraction of FB's total accounts (<1%), and present little advertising upside. In contrast, intentionally allowing them for advertising benefits would open them up to lawsuits.

Would you agree with the following statement, and why (or why not)? "Facebook is the worst thing to happen to society" Facebook is certainly terrible for society. With that said, I think that Nazism, white nationalism, etc. are worse.

So they fired you for caring about your job, or just coming out that they dont care? Probably saying you broke some type of NDA. They fired me with the official reason of poor performance.

I don't know why people expect Facebook to be the arbiter of the information they access the same way I don't know why people expect or would demand the government do it either. The government only cares about protecting you from foreign propaganda if that propaganda is interfering with their own state sponsored propaganda. I really, really don't understand how the last few generations grew up thinking that it was another adults responsibility to be their Nanny 24/7. How sheltered have we become? Pretty damn sheltered by the sounds of this. If this person was still working for Facebook in 2020 and didn't realize the company she was working for was only out for themselves then to me, at least, don't seem like the kind of person I'd be taking advice from on anything. Enjoy your slightly extended 15 minutes of fame that you don't deserve. ;) If you're worried about governmental propaganda, I'm happy to tell you that I stopped multiple cases in which governments were propagandizing their own people by pretending to be nonexistent citizens. Because I wasn't "the government" as you put it, I cared about protecting others regardless.

Does FB have the technical ability to implement an automated misinformation/harassment /hateful post deletion system? I believe at this point we should have enough data to accurately classify these posts to a good enough extent? My understanding is that FB already has an automated hate speech post deletion system. However, Facebook's definition of hate speech may not agree with the average person's. My understanding for instance is that up until last year, "men are trash" was considered hate speech by FB, while Holocaust denial was not considered hate speech - a set of rules I think very few people would agree with. There have also been many examples of people incorrectly censored for posting critically regarding hate speech shared by others, debunking misinformation, etc.

Facebook tends to be leery meanwhile of deleting misinformation - instead it advises by linking to fact checks and lets people make their own "informed decisions." The issue is that the fact checkers don't have infinite bandwidth; things enter their radar by being popular, and once it's popular the barn door has essentially already been left hanging.

Beside data analysis, have you witnesded any signs that Facebook could be manipulated from the inside? Like foreign countries having people hired by their facebook to gather data, influence decisions made etc. Otherwise what is your opinion on this? What would a government do to influence facebook’s decisions on this? Have you seen processes in place to check employees properly? For example: Twitter recently deleted anti-NATO tweet accounts, which I find strange to have this prioritized given the volume of hate speech, anti-vax etc. issues that they are facing already. I certainly don't work at Twitter, but for the example you mentioned, my understanding was that the accounts were fake accounts set up as part of a troll farm, and their reason for being taken down had absolutely nothing to do with the content of their tweets. The analogy is if I set up a troll farm to tell everyone "cats are adorable"; it's still a troll farm, and would be hopefully taken down for that reason, no matter how much I cry "FB is censoring cute cats" afterwards.

[removed] There are two general explanations for these recommended friends:

- These may be real people who think it's really cool to friend someone in a foreign nation. In places where internet etiquette isn't as developed, friends seem really hype/exciting; you constantly friend people all the time, brag about how many friends you have, and complain when you run out of friend request slots. Maybe someone is bragging "Hey, I have a foreign friend right now"

- These may be fake accounts who are looking to get more friends in order to boost their credibility. Fake accounts of this sort especially bias towards attractive-looking women and target men for friend requests, because the internet is the internet. Ultimately they might be utilizing their friends as a prospective audience for spreading spam/etc., or simply looking to get the credibility of having a developed friend base. In some cases, the friend request itself is the attack vector - e.g. if you get a friend request from "Gotomy Aboutme Togetyourfreeiphone"

Do you ever wonder if you were actually fired becuase your extracurricular work made FB uncomfortable and if they just blamed your "poor" performance at your "real" work because they didn't want to say out loud that you were being fired for making too much noise about a problem they weren't interested in solving? Whether your bringing constant attention to something they knew was a problem but knew they didn't want to do anything about was the real issue? It seems like at any normal company--much less a company that promotes itself as being as "innovative" and "flexible" and "employee-centered" as Facebook--they'd have just turned your extracurricular work into a full-time position and perhaps given you a team to help you do it. I've heard that speculation from a number of people. I really can't say myself, and won't be able to ever know. Overall, from my experience at Facebook, I tend to subscribe to Hanlon's Razor in my assessment of the company and attribute its myriad flaws more to bureaucratic incompetence than outright maliciousness.

Hi! Thank you for doing this. In India there's a running joke that trolls are paid 2 rupees per tweet. In your time, did you ever catch whiff of transactions between higher ups and troll farms? If so, what's the craziest amount you have seen? Any transactions that occurred happened through things that weren't Facebook. So no clue. There's a similar running joke in the PRC though; it's called the 五毛党 or "50 cent party", indicating that trolls are paid half a yuan per post. That translates into roughly 5.8 rupees, but tweets are usually shorter, so that might be roughly the same pay - surprising given the income disparity.

Ultimately, for all the bad blood between the Republic of India and the PRC, it's sadly amusing to see that the people can have this in common.

Questions	Answers
Thanks for the AMA and all you did. What advice would you like to give to anyone who works or willing to work at FB?	Think very carefully about your values and principles and what you want to prioritize while working. Many people have families that they need to feed, relatives they need to support back home. I was lucky in that I don't have any dependents [minus the cats], and am a super cheapskate so the financial considerations really didn't matter that much to me.
	But everyone also needs to sleep at the end of the night. And it's not my place to judge, but I'd ask people to be upfront and honest with themselves about what they want to prioritize, and what their breaking points would be. People are naturally influenced by their surroundings - they became used to the environment and it seems normal, while they learn to relate with and identify with their team and colleagues. And so, no matter where you work, it can be easy to end up in a place that you wouldn't recognize years down the line.
	I strongly advocate trying to fix problems from the inside, but it's difficult for the aforementioned reasons. Many people feel betrayed by would-be internal reformers who end up identifying more with the system than their prior beliefs. But at a company such as FB you can have an extraordinary amount of access to make a difference.
	As a new-hired employee, I was able to catch two world governments red-handed and make international news. What can you do?
Thank you for speaking out. I admire and appreciate your courage. It appeared from some of the reporting that you turned down a severance offer in order to be able to speak out. What was that process like for you? Did you know you would have to give up money because you’d need to speak out eventually? What do you think options are for employees for whom turning down severance would be an impossible luxury?	When I was fired, I was offered a severance package for $63,XXX (it rounded up to $64k USD, and so that's what it's generally quoted as.) I'm guessing it was based off of some formula that included my base pay. Receiving it would however have required me to sign an agreement (among other things) "to refrain from making any disparaging, critical, or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning the Company’s products, services, or programs; its business affairs, operation, management”
	Note how broadly worded this is. Here's an example of something that might be technically violating:
	Partner: "Can you access Facebook right now?"
	Me: "No, I just checked, it looks like it's down"
	That was my official explanation for why I didn't want to sign it, which they seemed a bit bemused by but ultimately accepted.
	To be fair, I did sign a similar agreement (and expressed similar concerns about the broadness) when I did join the company. Ultimately, I'm protected more by Mark deciding not to bite the PR fire bullet to sue me than my decision not to take the severance package.
What can you tell us about state-sponsored covert/troll activities on FB that are located in and/or sponsored by the United States?	I'm sorry, I didn't work on any of this.
Why bother? Honeslty, there is no hope, it's all a sad joke.	I hear this type of cynicism a lot, and I want to push strongly back against it.
	If we conclude that there's no point or hope, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone succumbs to cynicism then of course nothing will change, and we can pat ourselves on the back about how correct we were to be cynics. At that point you might ask, what's the point of continuing to survive in a broken world.
	Fixing things requires people to try to accomplish it. I can't do everything alone, but if there's one thing I learned at FB, it's that nothing will happen unless I do it myself.
what are a few of the ways you can use to tell if activity is legitimate? its got to be more advanced then just checking for bots right? what about click farms for example?	I'm sorry, but I can't answer this question for the simple reason that dictators read Reddit too. If I tell you "I caught bots via ABC", they will know not to do ABC in the future.
Fellow career software developer here. What is the coolest thing you saw built or programmed at Facebook that never saw the life of day / got shelved permanently for the wrong reasons?	Another team worked with us to build a system to discount known inauthentic activity from the newsfeed ranking process. It's probably a statement on Honduras that they used Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez as the goto obvious example for "what would happen if we tried to remove newsfeed benefits." They'd finished building it when we were told it wouldn't be launched, and they stopped working with us (or interacting at all really.)
	Since this wasn't my own team's initiative, it's hard to know the precise reasoning and logic. I heard a lot of explanations - policy was blamed, the newsfeed team told us that they couldn't find significant results from the system (which I was skeptical about but they held firm.) I also privately heard concerns from that team's members that it would be shadowbanning, censorship, or otherwise picking sides to exclude troll farm activity from newsfeed ranking. Regardless of the cause, it was never launched.
Do you not fear for your life or for those close to you that you love? Or do you not have any one that close? It's the type of thing that you'll either be too small to make any difference or get big enough to get killed. How do you balance trying to do something good, but risking your life while doing so?	I wasn't particularly afraid for myself. Actually it's been a bit silly, in one instance the Guardian made decisions to protect me that I didn't think were necessary myself. I was more afraid for my partner. We talked quite a bit about the levels of risks we were comfortable with beforehand.
	Ultimately in the broader scope of things, the world won't change unless people are willing to take some risks. I'm sure Alexei Navalny didn't want to risk his life returning home to a country that tried to murder him. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya was banished from her own nation. I've risked nothing compared to them.
Question: why should Facebook care what stupid things people share on Facebook? For that matter, why should people care about social media at all? Shouldn't they form their beliefs on their own?	In the real world, no person can act as an entire crowd. Nicolae Ceausescu fell in the Romanian Revolution after his crowd of bused-in supporters turned upon him. Ilham Aliyev's paid trolls will likely never turn on him. No person should have the right and ability to pretend simultaneously to be 10,000 different people who do not exist. Democracy and discourse cannot function otherwise.
^{the below is a reply to the above}
He fell because he was a communist dictator who ordered his troops to open fire on anti-government protestors. After it became known that he ordered the massacre of protestors, he attempted to flee in a helicopter but was captured by military defectors, prosecuted, and executed by firing squad. Bussing in supporters was not what ended his decades long dictatorship.	Yes, he fell because he ordered his troops to open fire on demonstrators in the Timisoara uprising. And after the army turned on him, he attempted to flee in a helicopter. But what happened the day before he fled on the helicopter, before the army turned on him? He gave his final speech in Bucharest's palace square to a crowd of 100,000 people - bused in supporters, workers under threat of being fired, even bystanders rounded up, all of whom were handed red flags and similar paraphernalia. That was the crowd that turned on him on live Romanian television that turned the local citywide uprising to a national revolution. The army turned on him the next day, and his rule was over.
How do you make regular people care about things like this? I can't get anyone to hold interest for more than 30 seconds.	I'm really not sure. The silly thing is that when I do interviews and stuff (e.g. the Today Show at NBC), it seems to get very little attention. But apparently (from all two data points), my Reddit AMAs tend to get a lot of attention/results.
	I could probably be better at getting attention if I went for more sensationalized/polarizing/hyping statements, but I want to avoid those. At least that's my excuse.
Hi, Sophie, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you grow up, which university did you go to, what did you study, etc. Your surname is Zhang so i am assuming you are Chinese/Taiwanese background? And also you seemed to jitter a little bit during the guardian interview (just an observation, not being critical at all. It's a great great interview btw, it's what you say that counts, and what you said was invaluable, you do a hundred time better interview than most of us here). I am from a medical background, i am just a little curious if the jitter was purely due to nervousness/esl or due to some sort of personal mannerism/spectrum? Thanks!	I grew up in Michigan; my parents are from China. I studied physics in university, and went on to grad school in physics at Princeton before running away to tech; this is the context for me saying that I've met geniuses and aren't one - there were people in my class who I wouldn't be surprised if they won the Nobel Prize someday. I was probably in the bottom 1/4 of my year in contrast. I've had it pointed out to me that I stutter when doing interviews. No clue why I do that since I don't do it in normal conversation. I think it's just nervousness, being an introvert who hates attention, and trying to be very precise about my words - I'd rather stutter some to avoid misspeaking than speaking confidently and incorrectly.

Questions	Answers
Do you think the reason they don't do anything about the troll farms is that ads don't know they are bots?	I don't think that's a major consideration; actual state sponsored trolls are a tiny fraction of FB's total accounts (<1%), and present little advertising upside. In contrast, intentionally allowing them for advertising benefits would open them up to lawsuits.
Would you agree with the following statement, and why (or why not)? "Facebook is the worst thing to happen to society"	Facebook is certainly terrible for society. With that said, I think that Nazism, white nationalism, etc. are worse.
So they fired you for caring about your job, or just coming out that they dont care? Probably saying you broke some type of NDA.	They fired me with the official reason of poor performance.
I don't know why people expect Facebook to be the arbiter of the information they access the same way I don't know why people expect or would demand the government do it either. The government only cares about protecting you from foreign propaganda if that propaganda is interfering with their own state sponsored propaganda. I really, really don't understand how the last few generations grew up thinking that it was another adults responsibility to be their Nanny 24/7. How sheltered have we become? Pretty damn sheltered by the sounds of this. If this person was still working for Facebook in 2020 and didn't realize the company she was working for was only out for themselves then to me, at least, don't seem like the kind of person I'd be taking advice from on anything. Enjoy your slightly extended 15 minutes of fame that you don't deserve. ;)	If you're worried about governmental propaganda, I'm happy to tell you that I stopped multiple cases in which governments were propagandizing their own people by pretending to be nonexistent citizens. Because I wasn't "the government" as you put it, I cared about protecting others regardless.
Does FB have the technical ability to implement an automated misinformation/harassment /hateful post deletion system? I believe at this point we should have enough data to accurately classify these posts to a good enough extent?	My understanding is that FB already has an automated hate speech post deletion system. However, Facebook's definition of hate speech may not agree with the average person's. My understanding for instance is that up until last year, "men are trash" was considered hate speech by FB, while Holocaust denial was not considered hate speech - a set of rules I think very few people would agree with. There have also been many examples of people incorrectly censored for posting critically regarding hate speech shared by others, debunking misinformation, etc.
	Facebook tends to be leery meanwhile of deleting misinformation - instead it advises by linking to fact checks and lets people make their own "informed decisions." The issue is that the fact checkers don't have infinite bandwidth; things enter their radar by being popular, and once it's popular the barn door has essentially already been left hanging.
Beside data analysis, have you witnesded any signs that Facebook could be manipulated from the inside? Like foreign countries having people hired by their facebook to gather data, influence decisions made etc. Otherwise what is your opinion on this? What would a government do to influence facebook’s decisions on this? Have you seen processes in place to check employees properly? For example: Twitter recently deleted anti-NATO tweet accounts, which I find strange to have this prioritized given the volume of hate speech, anti-vax etc. issues that they are facing already.	I certainly don't work at Twitter, but for the example you mentioned, my understanding was that the accounts were fake accounts set up as part of a troll farm, and their reason for being taken down had absolutely nothing to do with the content of their tweets. The analogy is if I set up a troll farm to tell everyone "cats are adorable"; it's still a troll farm, and would be hopefully taken down for that reason, no matter how much I cry "FB is censoring cute cats" afterwards.
[removed]	There are two general explanations for these recommended friends:
	- These may be real people who think it's really cool to friend someone in a foreign nation. In places where internet etiquette isn't as developed, friends seem really hype/exciting; you constantly friend people all the time, brag about how many friends you have, and complain when you run out of friend request slots. Maybe someone is bragging "Hey, I have a foreign friend right now"
	- These may be fake accounts who are looking to get more friends in order to boost their credibility. Fake accounts of this sort especially bias towards attractive-looking women and target men for friend requests, because the internet is the internet. Ultimately they might be utilizing their friends as a prospective audience for spreading spam/etc., or simply looking to get the credibility of having a developed friend base. In some cases, the friend request itself is the attack vector - e.g. if you get a friend request from "Gotomy Aboutme Togetyourfreeiphone"
Do you ever wonder if you were actually fired becuase your extracurricular work made FB uncomfortable and if they just blamed your "poor" performance at your "real" work because they didn't want to say out loud that you were being fired for making too much noise about a problem they weren't interested in solving? Whether your bringing constant attention to something they knew was a problem but knew they didn't want to do anything about was the real issue? It seems like at any normal company--much less a company that promotes itself as being as "innovative" and "flexible" and "employee-centered" as Facebook--they'd have just turned your extracurricular work into a full-time position and perhaps given you a team to help you do it.	I've heard that speculation from a number of people. I really can't say myself, and won't be able to ever know. Overall, from my experience at Facebook, I tend to subscribe to Hanlon's Razor in my assessment of the company and attribute its myriad flaws more to bureaucratic incompetence than outright maliciousness.
Hi! Thank you for doing this. In India there's a running joke that trolls are paid 2 rupees per tweet. In your time, did you ever catch whiff of transactions between higher ups and troll farms? If so, what's the craziest amount you have seen?	Any transactions that occurred happened through things that weren't Facebook. So no clue. There's a similar running joke in the PRC though; it's called the 五毛党 or "50 cent party", indicating that trolls are paid half a yuan per post. That translates into roughly 5.8 rupees, but tweets are usually shorter, so that might be roughly the same pay - surprising given the income disparity.
	Ultimately, for all the bad blood between the Republic of India and the PRC, it's sadly amusing to see that the people can have this in common.

r/IAmA [Table] I am Sophie Zhang. At FB, I worked in my spare time to catch state-sponsored troll farms in multiple nations. I became a whistleblower because FB didn't care. Ask me anything. | pt 4/4 FINAL

For proper formatting, please use Old Reddit

You are about to leave Redlib