I am Sophie Zhang, Facebook whistleblower. Ask me anything

Sophie Zhang mentioned that there was a Guardian article where she publicly blows the whistle on Facebook management (and lack) of inauthentically published information. This appears to be that article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-...

FWIW I'm sad that this thread is full of trolling, negative comments. I for one am glad that Sophie took a stand to do right for society and the world in the capacity that she had in Facebook. A very small silver lining, is that her work is an example of abuses on social networks being fought successfully, if given resources. And perhaps her Guardian piece will provide leverage to get those resources.

>“A manager on Strategic Response mused to myself that most of the world outside the West was effectively the Wild West with myself as the part-time dictator – he meant the statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures upon me.”

>She often felt responsible when civil unrest took hold in places she didn’t prioritize for investigation and action.

"Hard to be God".

This shows how powerful social networks have become, and how that power is harming society. Regulation and supervision by independent entities is one solution.

She tries to evade questions about censorship based on politics claiming she just deals with problems of inauthenticity, basically the issue of fake accounts trying to push some agenda, whether the agenda is right or "fake". But it is a bit hypocritical to disconnect the two, when you censor political opinions you are doing exactly the same thing only from the opposite side, you basically sqew the real map of political opinions. She wants Facebook to both censor and fight fake accounts, basically controlling the discourse from any possible direction. In some way facebook tries to be more linient and let different forces balance itself while she wants to be the ultimate commissar of who can push their agenda and who can't.

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mqw86u/i_am_sophie_zh... is a less hostile link