
A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation - contemporary343
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whitstleblower-memo
======
cabaalis
None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally
sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see
updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement
algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

~~~
hash872
What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an
open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos
from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media
has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard
problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some
idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers would join on, so we'd have their domain
expertise. I bet some prominent, wealthy anti-FB types could kick in some seed
money to get it off the ground. It could be set up as a non-profit, B corp or
foundation of some sort.... You could run non-targeted display ads for brand
advertising to help cover costs, with the added lure for advertisers that the
site would be brand-friendly because it's non-controversial.

Of course it wouldn't have sophisticated features like photo tagging and such,
and probably wouldn't be Hip And Cool for Gen Z, but it could be a functional
bare-bones Facebook replacement. You'd have probably have to disable virality
features, and maybe linking to external news sites just to prevent your racist
uncle from posting Breitbart links, I don't know.

Would that really be so hard? Or do the servers, hosting, security and
moderation costs just scale exponentially after some threshold of say 10
million users or what have you? Supposedly Instagram was running with a very
small team when Facebook acquired them

~~~
icelancer
I think you misunderstand.

People _want_ to be mad. They like it.

~~~
SamBam
It's a serious problem.

I have two Twitter profiles. One follows only makers, tinkerers, artists and
educators. I mark "do not want to see more posts like these" if anyone posts
something political.

I have another one that follows people with strong political views and the
latest outrage.

Guess which one makes me feel better when I view it?

Guess which one I find myself viewing more often?

~~~
icelancer
100%. I do the same thing. On my "safe" account I have 80+ muted phrases
(mostly political). On my corporate account I don't really have that luxury.

Same feeling.

------
bostik
I am surprised this segment (admittedly picked from Ars's secondary writeup)
hasn't made a splash:

 _" It's why I've seen priorities of escalations shoot up when others start
threatening to go to the press, and why I was informed by a leader in my
organization that my civic work was not impactful under the rationale that if
the problems were meaningful they would have attracted attention, became a
press fire, and convinced the company to devote more attention to the space,"
Zhang wrote._

That is a damage control role. Perhaps more tellingly, it highlights the
entire organisation's priorities: if it isn't drawing press attention, ignore
it. Of course that's not the phrase FB would use in a press release. They'd
deploy a convenient euphemism, such as "dedicate the resources elsewhere".

~~~
catsarebetter
I do think that's a poor way to handle the situation. Playing Devil's Advocate
here, but is there a better way for that organization, in their fragile
political position and immense power in the world, to handle situations like
that? The sheer amount of bandwidth to moderate and manage every piece of data
responsibly is so vast, there has to be a way of ranking content and trends
and to allocate resources to them.

It's not morally sound to have an organization optimize for public image, but
they are THE public image platform. Optimizing for social good would be so
much better but that's really hard to track and quantify and it can be so
divisive on some topics. Esp. now that trends marked "social good" are so
quickly developed and redeveloped as other things.

~~~
bostik
Simple: devote more resources. People, money, teams, _management support_.

Even if the rational reason for being slapdash is lack of resources and lack
of focus, that means the company is not investing enough on addressing the
underlying problems. Things happen, and sometimes you need to jump to put out
a fire - but if putting out fires is a routine mode of work, it's a symptom of
a much wider problem.

I am under no illusion that trying to protect against disinformation and
propaganda would be easy. As you said, the volume is so vast that it's going
to require a lot of effort and immense focus. Constant firefighting shifts the
efforts, and deprives focus.

Whether that's intentional or an emerging property, the end result is the
same.

~~~
indigochill
Suppose you have enough resources to try to do it "right". How do you moderate
in a way that's globally fair? There is disinformation (which should be
moderated), but there are also legitimate disagreements (which should not).
Even facts themselves are often open to interpretation, and people don't argue
in objective terms.

The degree of nuance leads me to believe it's just impossible to do at
commercial/global scale (though I would agree it could be done better than it
currently is).

~~~
ethbr0
That isn't what's being discussed here. This is the case of artificial
amplification of opinion.

One person : one opinion seems a fair goal.

Posting all day about something as yourself is very different than running a
network of accounts.

------
aahortwwy
The pattern of hiring young, passionate, ambitious workers, then telling them
their job is of critical importance to the company (and, in this case, society
at large) while simultaneously underfunding their team and providing them with
completely inadequate leadership is REALLY common in Silicon Valley companies.
These same companies will actively stigmatize saying "it's not my job," and so
you have very green employees who end up doing work that's wildly outside
their zones of competence and comfort, internalizing all the stress that
builds up along with being put in that position and not even understanding
that speaking up is an option.

Many of these people lack the experience required to see the forest for the
trees and they draw similar conclusions to the ones in this memo. "There's no
bad intent, we're just overworked and underresourced" (paraphrased) is
something I've heard time and time again from people working on supposedly
important problems at companies making money hand over fist.

~~~
catsarebetter
Companies do this a lot with college grads, they sell them on a vision that
they will have high impact and an important role in order to get them into
their hiring funnel. It's not necessarily an operational failure more than it
is a sleazy marketing tactic to prey on the lack of information by young
ambitious people. Though it also results in an operational failure and a
terrible waste of young talent.

~~~
aahortwwy
It goes beyond the hiring funnel. These narratives are pushed and often
believed internally. The people who actually do the work, who understand that
things are not how they should be but don't understand why, who are passionate
and ambitious enough to assume personal responsibility for the outcomes of
their efforts nonetheless (as if a junior-to-mid-level data scientist
receiving radio silence from their management chain can reasonably be expected
to protect democracy in places like Ukraine and Azerbaijan), often don't
understand that they've simply been put in a fundamentally dysfunctional
situation - and it's rare that anyone will actually sit them down and explain
that to them.

~~~
catsarebetter
I really like what you said here and yeah, it's tough b/c I don't think anyone
would explain this to them

------
catsarebetter
This is pretty frustrating, clearly she said that she wanted her privacy
respected, they even acknowledge that in the article, why did they publish her
full name and a short description of her linkedin just to make it even easier
to find her? What motivation did they have to do this?

But they hid the name of the software engineer that spoke on her credibility?
Something seems a little off, either on the source's side or on the
distributor's side.

~~~
nerdponx
Maybe the same reason why a journalist tried to dox Slate Star Codex. Which is
to say, who knows but it probably isn't good.

~~~
catsarebetter
It's really uncomfortable reading the part where they say that they aren't
publishing personal information from the memo as if they're doing something to
protect her privacy when they've given the internet way too much information
on this person already. Things like the state of her mental health, some
signal into her economic status, etc. Things that even non-devs on the
internet could pick up on, it's so tone-deaf.

------
brundolf
> Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and
> a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s
> employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the
> company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations
> risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm.

> “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside world
> that can lend itself to such theories, but the reality is that many of our
> actions are slapdash and haphazard accidents,” she wrote.

> “We simply didn’t care enough to stop them”

This is the key takeaway, IMO. Not as an excuse for Facebook, but as an
indictment of "slapdash" information technology in general, particularly
social media. It's becoming more and more clear that "bringing the world
closer together" is a pandora's box, one that Facebook is not equipped
(motivated?) to deal with the consequences of. Maybe no company ever could be.
Maybe this is simply a thing that shouldn't exist.

~~~
thundergolfer
“A lack of resources” is not a thing a 500+ billion dollar company gets to
lean on, and Sophia does acknowledge that.

This is the old “don’t tell me what you care about, show me your balance sheet
and I’ll tell you what you care about”.

~~~
brundolf
Right, which was the reason for the "(motivated?)". It is a genuinely hard
problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's intractable even for a motivated
organization, but at the very least there's no profit-incentive to put real
effort into solving it. So for one reason or another, I don't think any
company can be relied upon to keep a handle on this problem.

------
strangeloops85
"“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without
oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians
globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote."

The scale of how the platform's being used for political manipulation in every
country is enormous, and it's clear that if a junior data scientist is having
to independently make these decisions, that there's little interest in
proactively dealing with this.

~~~
swiley
With real estate and rent so expensive a protest by a junior employee pretty
much ends in moving back with their parents or homelessness.

~~~
ummonk
Nah. Even were I a junior employee, I could go work at any company offering a
six figure salary and continue to live comfortably without roommates in SF.
Rent is exorbitant but you still end up with half your post-tax software
engineer salary as disposable income.

------
ummonk
What is the public interest in publishing her name after she has expressed
concerns about her safety? Shame on Buzzfeed.

"In her post, Zhang said she did not want it to go public for fear of
disrupting Facebook’s efforts to prevent problems around the upcoming 2020 US
presidential election, and due to concerns about her own safety. BuzzFeed News
is publishing parts of her memo that are clearly in the public interest."

~~~
reaperducer
It’s journalism 101. You provide the identity of your source to help the
reader evaluate his credibility.

Anonymous sources are supposed to be used only in extreme circumstances. But
these days that gets abused all the time.

The New York Times has published its rules for making a source anonymous, and
they’re pretty good, IMO.

~~~
ummonk
They didn't provide the identity of their source. They instead doxxed a third
party who wished to remain private for her safety.

------
LatteLazy
I get frustrated over these pairs.

What are Facebook supposed to do? They could spend billions moderating every
comment and like, but they'd piss off every politicians world wide and the
users would all cry censorship (and that's if they get it perfectly correct).
They could pick a side, but the same would apply with slightly fewer pissed
off people. They could do nothing and save billions and piss off less people.

And in the background, a small number of people continue to manipulate
everything you see in legacy media, and no one really cares because we're used
to it. Seriously. What the fuck?

~~~
the_snooze
You're right, moderation at Facebook's scale isn't feasible. It's the scale
itself that's the problem. They've focused so much on "making the world more
open and connected " that they never stopped to think how that could be
weaponized.

~~~
Nasrudith
If you focus on how everything could be weaponized you are a short sighted
paranoid a skip and a hop away from fascism. Even tyrants aren't stupid enough
to ban all hammers.

How about stopping the idiotic tool blaming and blaming the bad actors?

~~~
the_snooze
Where did I say they should focus on how it could be weaponized? I'm saying
they never seemed to have even considered it. And that's a charitable take;
they could very well have considered it and decided it wasn't worth their
worry.

It's all in balance. Bad actors are responsible. But systems designers have a
responsibility too. If you optimize a system for something (e.g., engagement),
that's a reflection of your values. We're seeing the ugly consequences of
Facebook's values.

------
evolve2k
I can see it in my least tech savvy, least educated friends. As Facebook users
they seem to be radicalising the longer I leave them to the devices.

But what’s the alternative?

If people want family & friends social media, where to go?

Aren’t the open/alternative platforms just as open to abusive, if not more so,
as no-one like the whistleblower is even hired when it comes to open
platforms?

~~~
sibeliuss
The alternative is introducing some regulation around patterns of usage.

------
bryan_w
What's scary is that with all the resources that FB has, it still has to
prioritize enforcement, which means that platforms like reddit or even HN have
no chance of catching this.

------
carabiner
Missing from article is any causality between Facebook bot farms and any real
world effects, election outcomes or deaths. It just says, oh there were a
million fake likes on a post in this country... months later some political
unrest. Like this has never happened before Facebook?

~~~
aww_dang
Bots and fake accounts are another form of advertising. Governments and
political parties manipulated, influenced or controlled legacy media. Online
and offline politicians are disseminating misleading political ads. Partsian
news networks attack their opponents all day long while claiming to be
objective.

On the surface the outrage seems misplaced. This seems like business as usual.

Perhaps the outrage isn't misplaced if the goal is regulatory capture and
entrenchment of the social media space. Imagine a world where "fact-checking"
and identity verification is mandated by regulators as a prerequisite to
posting online. This wave of censorship will be buoyed by a tide of righteous
indignation.

[https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/governments-are-
go...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/governments-are-going-to-
mandate-fact-checking-on-facebook-aap-boss-20191117-p53bat.html)

------
3gg
Something I have always failed to understand is why there are people who still
work for this company. She states “I know that I have blood on my hands by
now”; doesn't everyone who works there? At this point, it is well known by
everyone that this is a product flawed to the core. It is maintained by a
company that insists is not a media company to evade all social
responsibility, and insists that its AI will solve the unsolvable problem of
moderation at scale. Ethical alternatives of federated social networks already
exist. Why do people still work there? Do they not care?

~~~
entropea
A lot of people don't care about ethics and mortality in their work as long as
they get paid and get to go home to a house/apartment at the end of the day.

~~~
3gg
I think you meant "morality" instead of "mortality", but I'll go with
mortality anyway.

------
luckylion
_“One of the big tools of authoritarian regimes is to humiliate the opposition
in the mind of the public so that they 're not viewed as a credible or
legitimate alternative,” she told BuzzFeed News. “There's a chilling effect.
Why would I post something if I know that I'm going to deal with thousands or
hundreds of these comments, that I'm going to be targeted?”_

That's not just a tool for authoritarian regimes, that's pretty much the most
used tool in any form of political conflict, in any country.

------
babesh
It’s weird watching Neal Stephenson novels come to life: miasma, apm,
corporate-states, virtual worlds, mind viruses.

------
mark_l_watson
This sounds really bad. In searching the web for this title it seems like
small news services are running this. To be fair to Facebook, I am willing to
wait a day and see what they and other organizations/news/people say about
this disclosure.

~~~
joelg
Looks like the NYT ran a short summary
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/technology/facebook-
manip...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/technology/facebook-manipulation-
whistleblower-sophie-zhang.html)

------
Animats
So what happened to Facebook's "real names" policy? If they got serious about
that, fake accounts would be less of a problem.

~~~
rodonn
It's still a policy and they try hard to enforce it, but despite taking down
literally billions of fake accounts each year, it is hard to stop 100% of it.

------
clomond
Is it just me, or does it seem like, with both social media and “tech” in
general, that the ‘regulation axe’ is grinding - and that it is only a matter
of time that these algorithms core to these companies’ business models
‘suffer’ from likely blunt, harsh regulatory instruments that will broadly
stop this kind of influence and manipulation.

By doing so, it will also significantly harm these business models (and
valuations) as we know it today.

~~~
high_5
Indeed! Social media amplified vaxxers, climate change deniers and all the
possible fringe lunatics you can find.

The social media should be much limited by the physical aspect, for example,
if you never met the person in a real-life event, you can't connect with it
via social media.

Throw out the news feeds. Throw out the ads alltogether (because political
propagandists will always find a way if you want to make the distinction).

------
ManlyBread
The article claims that these kind of manipulation caused them to be reported
by international news but this is the first time I ever hear about any of the
examples listed by the article, which leads me to believe that these kind of
manipulations doesn't really have that much power.

------
1vuio0pswjnm7
Love the use of the term "inauthentic". They cannot say "fake" anymore.

~~~
anigbrowl
It's also a clever little bit of legal CYA. Coordinated inauthentic behavior'
= fake accounts amplifying things. Actual extremists posting on main and
organizing on FB? A-OK as long as they exercise a bare minimum of discretion
and avoid discussing specific illegal activities.

~~~
rodonn
I'm not sure I follow your logic. "fake" seems like a completely wrong word to
use to describe actual extremists (but I completely agree they should do more
to police extremist content).

Coordinated inauthentic behavior describes exactly what it says on the tin.
They try to limit coordinated inauthentic behavior even if the content is true
and even if the users are "real" people (e.g. workers who are paid to
click/promote/create content).

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm saying FB heavily emphasizes its efforts against coordinated inauthentic
behavior as if that were the only significant problem on its platform.

------
tareqak
The only way anything will happen to Facebook is if these three things
actually happen in sequence and within a short period of time of the first
event occurring.

1) Facebook wittingly or unwittingly ignores political manipulation on its
platform within the United States of America that demonstrably affects US
political outcomes.

2) All necessary parts of the US government required to hold a corporation
like Facebook accountable for 1) act in concert to do so.

3) The US mainstream media extensively reports on 1) and 2).

------
Barrin92
>Zhang said she turned down a $64,000 severance package from the company to
avoid signing a nondisparagement agreement.

You really have to ask yourself what kind of place it is you're working for
and what you're building, if a totally regular employee basically is paid
hush-money to not speak about their job.

This isn't a private business any more, it's the mafia. People talk a lot
about the culture of free speech and the rights of end-users, but we live in a
world where a private company that builds a social media website, this isn't
the NSA or anything, can stop an employee from _speaking the truth_.

It's time policy makers throw all of this out of the window, together with the
anti-competitive non-competes that at this point affect IIRC, almost a fifth
of the American workforce.

~~~
jdc
I know someone who got extra severance conditional on non-disparagement when
leaving a pretty modest Canadian tech company.

Is this a more rare event than I thought?

~~~
Supermancho
It's pretty rare. Never have I ever met anyone who had or would sign such an
agreement. Given my income bracket, I should have by now if it was merely
uncommon. Then again, maybe not admitting to the agreement is part of the
agreement. Insidious.

~~~
dfadsadsf
Worked in three companies and in all of them every single fired (as was the
case here) individual was offered severance. Usually it's 2 months + 2 weeks
per year of work but higher severances are routinely offered if company feels
person can be a problem. 64k (4-5 months of pay) is essentially go away money
- not FB trying to really hush somebody. Even baseless rejected EEOC complain
will cost more to resolve.

~~~
Supermancho
I was not talking about "severance" per se, but about a non-disparaging
agreements. I would agree that severance is typical.

That being said, California, Oregon, Washington State, Georgia, getting 4-5
month's pay as severance? That doesn't even make sense from a business
perspective, imo.

If you're small enough you are face to facing investors, everyone has
experience with volatile employees. If you're larger, you don't care about a
single player anyway. That's just my experience.

~~~
dfadsadsf
Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-
disparagement. Severance is just cost of business - HR sees volatile employee
and automatically offer severance with not-sue, not-disparage agreement.
Employment lawyers are $600/hour and a huge distraction.

[http://www.shpclaw.com/Schwartz-Resources/severance-and-
rele...](http://www.shpclaw.com/Schwartz-Resources/severance-and-release-
agreements-six-6-common-traps-and-a-rhetorical-question?p=11399)

~~~
Supermancho
> Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-
> disparagement.

I've never seen it. Employment lawyers are very happy to take cases against
companies, who have money. Just like non-competes, they have been dropped from
contracts over the last few decades (severability applies anyway) on the west
coast.

------
fareesh
Cognizant employees (contracted Facebook Moderators) are on camera admitting
that they censor specific people based on their political leanings.

Facebook sent them specific memos about which violent images towards which
politicians were not to be removed.

That particular set of facts escapes most coverage of this topic for obvious
reasons.

These conversations about this topic will never be seen as sincere since they
themselves are biased.

------
gverrilla
Facebook is trying to get attention worldwide by playing this master political
role amongst other things, which is just a decoy because everyday it's losing
real world relevance - less people use it, less and less.

~~~
shalmanese
Maybe in the US but in many of the countries listed, Facebook and its
associated properties are synonymous with the internet.

~~~
gverrilla
I don't believe this to be true. It would only be true if you consider
'internet' can change meaning VERY FAST and almost inevitably. Because that's
what happens, everywhere in the world: people get really excited about new
tech and possibilities and explore everything about it, very fast. Facebook is
trying to build itself in social/cultural fabric as some sort of institution
of democracy or something like that, when in fact it's only a fad. This can
change in almost a glimpse of an eye. Anyone who has taken the time to study
platform strategy will know this.

------
carriganisms
Do any of the major platforms really have a handle on how to deal with these
challenges? I'm not excusing the lack of oversight. But most companies that
grow this quickly are a complete cluster inside. Imagine having to battle well
funded state actors on top of trying to build a business.

Again, not saying Facebook shouldn't be held accountable. But it's always easy
from the outside looking in.

~~~
3gg
I think your cause-effect is backwards. Moderation at scale does not work, and
a social network does not have to be the all-out-for-clicks disinformation
machine that Facebook is. The company _chooses_ to make it that way because it
is optimal for their bottom line; rage makes clicks, clicks make money. They
already built the business, and they choose again and again not to change it.
So, to your statement, it is not that the company accidentally grew to what it
is today and now it is swamped with unsolvable problems; rather, the company
solved a different problem and has no intention to solve the others (nor they
can with this business model).

------
justaguy88
Sounds like they need to increase severance packages

------
xwdv
This is so melodramatic, and a bit pretentious to think your Facebook job has
such an effect on the world.

~~~
loofatoofa
rohingya?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
This memo is from a member of the "fake engagement team", tasked with fighting
fake accounts used for disinformation operations. The Rohingya issue was
primarily a moderation issue; community and military leaders were issuing
authentic calls for violence under their true name.

------
hpoe
~~Can we get the actual report Zhang published, rather than a BuzzFeed link? I
mean is Buzz Feed really considered news?~~

EDIT:

I retract my comment, I was unaware of the distinct nature of Buzzfeed news
from Buzzfeed proper,

~~~
boulos
They mention this in the writeup: it’s not going to be made public (yet).

Also BuzzFeed _News_ does real journalism, despite the BuzzFeed origin of
their group.

~~~
evolve2k
I’ll concur buzzfeed news do excellent journalism and should be considered
distinct.

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/buzzfeednews/about-
buzz...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/buzzfeednews/about-buzzfeed-
news)

From their Award page:

BuzzFeed News is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: for a stunning
probe that proved operatives with apparent ties to Vladimir Putin have engaged
in a targeted killing campaign against his perceived enemies on British and
American soil, and an exposé of a dispute-settlement process used by
multinational corporations to undermine domestic regulations and gut
environmental laws at the expense of poorer nations.

Our reporting has also won a George Polk Award, National Magazine Award,
Livingston Award, Society of Editors Press Award, National Association of
Black Journalists Award, National Association of Hispanic Journalists Award,
Mirror Award, GLAAD Media Award, London Press Club Award....

