“I worked through the disease to take down a politically sophisticated network of more than 1,000 actors working to influence elections,” he wrote in a 6,600-word internal memo for Facebook employees posted online.
Facebook never publicly disclosed this “network” or that it had removed it. No mention of who was running the “network”.
The head of the BJP TI cell, Amit Malviya, shared excerpts from the memorandum and wrote that a “network” tried to influence local elections in Delhi. “AAP won,” he tweeted, hinting that the party was involved in this coordinated campaign to influence the elections.
AAP IT chief Ankit Lal responded to Malviya’s comment. “It is well known that the platform (Facebook) favors BJP. If by “coordinated campaign” you mean we were organized, then yes we were. You cannot fight the BJP while being disorganized. If by ‘coordinated campaign’ Malviya means that we were in sync with Facebook, then that’s a lie, “said Lal.
Excerpts from Zhang’s memorandum were first published by BuzzFeed News, which had obtained the “internal” document intended for Facebook employees. The leak comes at a time when Facebook is facing intense scrutiny over its electoral integrity efforts and how it moderates content in India.
According to the memo, Zhang had allegedly found evidence of coordinated campaigns to push or hinder political candidates or results in countries like India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Boliviaand Ecuador. He claimed to have rejected $ 64,000 from the social media giant to avoid signing a non-disparagement agreement.
While crafting the kinds of campaigns he eliminated, Zhang wrote that he found “multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on a large scale to deceive their own citizens …”
“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without supervision, and I have taken law enforcement action against so many prominent politicians globally that I have lost count,” he wrote. Zhang also wrote that he felt “blood on his hands.”
According to her LinkedIn profile, Zhang worked as a data scientist for Facebook’s Site Integrity Fake Engagement team, which monitors bots influencing elections.
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