This week, the digital media Buzzfeed published without permission expressed a memorandum of more than 6 thousand words in which he Sophie Zhanga former employee of the company led by Mark Zuckerberg, exposed a campaign of manipulation, deception and abuse. to the users of the social network.
With the header "My hands are bloody," Zhang, Data scientist, declares Facebook shirked responsibility by failing to intervene in clear manipulation in global politicsmainly in countries such as Azerbaijan and Honduraswhere fake accounts are used to inflate a trend and thus influence political discourse in the countries concerned.
It is also noted that, in countries such as India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador sufficient data was found to suggest that there was coordinated campaigns for guide policy outcomes The memorandum assures us that those responsible have not been found.
"I encountered unscrupulous attempts by governments of foreign nations to abuse Facebook on a large scale and thus mislead their citizenry, which led to consequences in the international debate," Zhang said in the memo, which was partially published in the media outlet. Buzzfeed News in its American version.
In summary, Zhang states that it took Facebook 9 months to stop a campaign with money that is not known to come from to boost President Juan Orlando Hernandez of Honduras.
At Azerbaijanthe scientist discovered that the political party that was in power at the time of the power harassed opponentsThe investigation was dismissed until a year later. Due to his workload, Zhang was not involved in the coordinated actions in Bolivia and Ecuador.
In 2018, Zhang took it upon himself to carry out a massive action where he removed about 10.5 million False interactions in Brazil and the U.S. for the elections of the same year.
In 2019, Zhang confesses that a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) investigator alerted Facebook to Russian government activity about "a high-profile American political figure" that had not been dictated, where Zhang had to immediately intervene.
In the case of UkraineZhang met with misleading activity supporting Yulia Tymoshenko ?in favour of the European Union? and to Volodymyr GroysmanThe latter being the least affected.
The data scientist also reported on the coordinated handling on the Facebook page of the Spanish Ministry of Health during the peak of the pandemic because of the Covid-19 in that country; as a result, nearly 672,000 fake accounts were removed.
At IndiaZhang took it upon himself to eliminate a highly sophisticated political network of more than a thousand individuals who collaborated for influence elections local events that took place in Delhi in February this year.
In an attempt to mitigate the damage, Facebook spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois said the company is looking to "prevent malicious behavior from abusing Facebook's systems". The spokeswoman stated that in addition to mitigating "inauthentic behavior" is one of the priorities at the social network, but that they are also working to address the problem of unwanted messages - or "unwanted messages". spamand false reactions.
