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Whistleblower: Facebook is Allowing Dictators to Mislead Their Citizens

Published: May 31, 2021, 9:30 a.m.

Last month,\xa0Sophie Zhang, a former data scientist at Facebook,\xa0went public as a whistleblower\xa0drawing attention to how the company delayed action against or outright ignored manipulation of it\u2019s platform by autocratic leaders and global governments to the detriment of the people of those countries.

All work, including community management, requires trade-offs, areas of focus, and prioritization. Our teams and resources allow us to increase our areas of focus and more consistently foster the interactions that our communities exist for. But for an organization with the staff and resources of Facebook, you\u2019d expect the trade-offs to be few and far between, and the areas of focus to be vast \u2013 covering the areas of the platform prone to abuse just as much as areas that foster healthy interactions.

But for Facebook, Sophie describes how, at least internally, those lines between healthy interactions and \u201cinauthentic interactions\u201d surfaced potential conflicts of interest, slowness to take action, and a tendency to focus on some countries more than others.

When we\u2019re prioritizing what to work on or how to foster our communities, we may reference company values or internal OKRs. But for community professionals, there\u2019s also the question of how does this preserve the safety of the community and those in it? How is Facebook scaling to protect the political safety of its members? Or perhaps a better question is, does it even think it has the responsibility to do so? As Sophie says, \u201cit\u2019s important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It\u2019s not focused on saving the world or fixing the product. I think it\u2019s important to be cynically realistic about the matter.\u201d

Sophie and Patrick discuss:

Manipulation so brazen that the government actors didn\u2019t even bother to hide it
The real-world implications that \u201cinauthentic behavior\u201d on Facebook has had for Azerbaijan, Honduras, India, and other countries
How Facebook differentiates and actions inauthentic profiles and pages

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Big Quotes

The unbelievable size of the Azerbaijan government\u2019s fake comment operation (13:33):\xa0\u201cI\u2019m going to give you a number that was very shocking. This Azerbaijan [Facebook manipulation] network, it comprised 3% of all comments by [Facebook Pages] on other pages through the entire world. \u2026 Azerbaijan is, of course, a tiny country. Somewhere at Facebook, I\u2019m sure there was a team whose [goal] was to make page activity go up, and they were congratulating themselves on the comment numbers.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Repetitive content can be totally normal (16:41):\xa0\u201cIt can be suspicious if everyone is saying the same thing at the same time, but there can also be completely legitimate reasons. \u2026 For instance, \u2026 Facebook [once] blocked [people saying] \u2018Happy Thanksgiving.\u2019 Because, \u2018Oh my God, everyone\u2019s saying \u2018Happy Thanksgiving,\u2019 there has to be something weird going on.\u2019 \u2026 At a company the size of Facebook, most enforcement is automated.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Facebook isn\u2019t altruistic in nature (20:15):\xa0\u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that, at the end of the day, Facebook is a company. Its goal is to make money. It\u2019s not focused on saving the world or fixing the product.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Facebook\u2019s actions are driven by outside pressure (21:04):\xa0\u201cMost of Facebook\u2019s investigations on coordinated, inauthentic behavior come in response to outside reports. What I mean by that is NGOs doing investigations, news organizations giving reports, opposition groups complaining, etc. When there is an outside figure that\u2019s feeding this to Facebook, that\u2019s someone outside the company who can put pressure on Facebook, who can say, \u2018If you\u2019re not going to do anything about this, we\u2019re going to the New York Times and tell them you don\u2019t care about our country. What do you think about that?\u2019 Then suddenly, Facebook will decide to get their act together.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

How Facebook ignored a network of accounts tied a member of parliament (25:16):\xa0\u201cIn India, when I found a network of fake accounts that were supporting a political figure, we had gotten sign off to take it down, but suddenly, we realized the account was directly tied to and likely run by that political figure. This was a member of the Indian Parliament; he or someone close to him was happily running several dozen fake accounts to support himself. After that, suddenly everything stopped because I asked repeatedly for a decision, even if they said, \u2018No.\u2019 \u2026 The result was always silence. \u2026

\u201cWhen this keeps going on, when you\u2019re already in a conversation with them and you\u2019re talking about A and they ignore you when you bring up B, then it\u2019s very clear that something is going on. They still have plausible deniability that maybe everyone just didn\u2019t hear. I was very upset about this case. To me, it made no sense that the politician [being] tied to a network of fake accounts was reason to stop. It was more reason to take action. If he complained, what was he going to do? Complain to the press, \u2018Hey, Facebook took down my fake accounts?'\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Facebook\u2019s half-hearted efforts in Azerbaijan and Honduras\xa0(28:47):\xa0\u201cIn Honduras and Azerbaijan [after Facebook took action against manipulation], they came back immediately and did it again, and Facebook didn\u2019t stop them. It\u2019s still going down in Azerbaijan. The analogy I\u2019m going to use is that, suppose the punishment for robbing a bank is that you have your bank robbery tools confiscated, and there\u2019s a press release, \u2018This person robbed the bank, they shouldn\u2019t do it.\u2019 Someone robs a bank, because the tool was confiscated, they use the money to buy more bank robbery tools and rob the bank again. This seems like an absurd example, but it\u2019s what\u2019s going on at Facebook.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Autocratic leaders don\u2019t care about Facebook\u2019s press releases (29:20):\xa0\u201cThe idea of publicizing [abuse of Facebook through press releases] is to embarrass people. The president of Honduras sent soldiers into the streets to shoot civilian protesters in 2019, after the police went on strike and refused. Basically, his brother was sentenced to jail by American courts for helping his brother smuggle drugs and take bribes from El Chapo. This is a man who\u2019s incapable of embarrassment. In Azerbaijan, in 2013, they accidentally released election results the day before the actual election, true story, which was shocking. Compared to that, what\u2019s [a press release] going to do to them?\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds

Facebook\u2019s statements skirt around the actual issue (37:16):\xa0\u201cSuppose your spouse asks you, \u2018Did you do the dishes last night?\u2019 You respond by saying, \u2018I always prioritize doing the dishes. I work hard on doing the dishes every time so that we can have clean dishes. Food left on dishes is disgusting.\u2019 That might all be true but you did not actually answer the question, which is, \u2018Did you do the dishes last night?\u2019 That\u2019s the typical response that Facebook gives, and if you look at the [Guardian] article, that\u2019s essentially what they\u2019re doing. Because they\u2019re not denying what I\u2019m saying. They can\u2019t deny what I\u2019m saying because they know I\u2019m telling the truth.\u201d \u2013@szhang_ds