A whistleblower claims Facebook ignored evidence that fake accounts were used to undermine elections and political affairs around the globe, with overwhelmed junior-level employees left to arbitrarily police malevolent activity, according to BuzzFeed News.
Citing “an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee,” BuzzFeed News reported on Tuesday that now-former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang has “concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion.”
The bombshell report, headlined, “’I Have Blood on My Hands’: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation,” was written by reporters Craig Silverman, Ryan Mac and Pranav Dixit after they obtained Zhang’s memo.
“In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them,” the report said.
Zhang declined to speak with BuzzFeed News for the piece.
“We’ve built specialized teams, working with leading experts, to stop bad actors from abusing our systems, resulting in the removal of more than 100 networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior,” Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told BuzzFeed in a statement. “It’s highly involved work that these teams do as their full-time remit. Working against coordinated inauthentic behavior is our priority, but we’re also addressing the problems of spam and fake engagement. We investigate each issue carefully, including those that Ms. Zhang raises, before we take action or go out and make claims publicly as a company.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment from Fox News…
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