“
It wasn't my plan to talk to the media,
” sighs Sophie Zhang on the phone.
"
I don't really understand people who seek attention
."
What brought this young woman who readily describes herself as "
introverted, and [who] doesn't really like public speaking?
" in the light ?
A series of breaches in the chain of controls of Facebook, where she was an employee, first of all.
Zhang tried in vain to warn his company of the political instrumentalisation of the social network in certain southern countries.
It's a context, too.
For several weeks, Facebook - renamed Meta by its founder Mark Zuckerberg - has been under fire from critics.
At issue: the revelations of the whistleblower Frances Haugen, who relied on thousands of internal documents to denounce the inaction of the social network in the face, among other things, of hate speech.
To discover
What is Twitch, this video service that everyone is talking about?
Read alsoFrances Haugen, the whistleblower who shakes Facebook
While the American and European parliaments were electrified by these revelations, Sophie Zhang is counting on this context to highlight her research on political manipulation.
At the end of October, she was heard by the British Parliament and also indicated that she was at the disposal of the United States Congress.
Pangs of bureaucracy
Sophie Zhang was hired by Facebook in 2018. Her work as a data scientist then focused on "
fake engagement
", that is to say false interactions with the content of a brand or a person wishing to s '' offer more visibility. Missions that do not then relate to the political uses of social networks, but the
data scientist
begins to take an interest in them in her spare time. Several cases caught his attention: among them, the Facebook page of the President of Honduras, which amassed an unrealistic number of "
likes
". She then discovers that most of them come from fake accounts. "
It was not a difficult investigation
," said Sophie Zhang. "
It was like investigating a crime scene where the culprit left his name, fingerprints and the identity of the victim
”.
Read also Metavers: how Facebook wants to immerse its users "in the internet"
Sophie Zhang does not unwrap.
It continues to track political manipulations, especially in southern countries, and amassing evidence that proves that Azerbaijani power has harassed opposition parties online through thousands of manipulated pages.
Networks of similar pages are unearthed in the Philippines, Afghanistan, South Korea, Bolivia ... “
If Facebook had wanted to find these elements, it could have.
I'm not a genius,
”adds Zhang.
The former employee quickly has the impression of emptying the ocean with a teaspoon and relies on her hierarchy. She then has to deal, according to her story, with the pangs of the Facebook bureaucracy. "
When I warned a team, it referred me to a second, which itself referred to a third, which again directed me to the first,
" accuses Sophie Zhang. “
Their reaction was similar to that observed after a mass killing in a high school: everyone agrees that it is wrong. But some will say that it is necessary to ban the carrying of weapons, others to strengthen the security of establishments ... In short, no one agrees on the solution and all that remains is' thoughts and prayers'
”.
In mid-August 2020, she was disembarked by Facebook because of her professional performance deemed insufficient.
When she left, she decided to publish, on the internal exchange platform Workspace, a memo of 7,800 words on all of her research.
Its content, which Zhang initially wanted to reserve for Facebook employees, was revealed in the press by the Buzzfeed site.
A few months later, she decides to speak in the press herself and paints a grim portrait of her experience at the Menlo Park giant in a series of articles published by the Guardian.
"Facebook is a business"
His revelations did not have the impact hoped for.
"
All I know is that following this case, Facebook reduced the time granted to former employees on Workplace after their dismissal,
" she explains.
For its part, the company has repeatedly defended itself from relinquishing control of potential political manipulation.
“
We actively track abuses across the planet, and one of our teams is dedicated to this work.
We have dismantled more than 150 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior
, ”Facebook told the MIT Technology Review last July.
Read alsoFrom Facebook to Meta: why does a company change its name?
Sophie Zhang, for her part, refused severance pay of $ 64,000 - because it involved a confidentiality agreement that would limit her word on the company. Since her revelations, she says she spends a lot of time at home cuddling her two cats, Midnight and Shadow. She was not rehired. “
I don't think it would be fair to the company that employs me, when my role [as a whistleblower] is a constant distraction
,” she explains.
Pitcher alert has not stopped since the series of articles published in the
Guardian
, attempting to alert public opinion and legislators, believes that "
Facebook is not only under the pressure of a control
oh
the outside . Most of the internal investigations are launched in reaction to media or political pressure
”. But it was the highly orchestrated revelations of internal Facebook documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen at the end of September, which at the same time allowed Zhang's work to be brought up to date. “
Facebook is a business, so its goal is to make money,
” she recalls, before taking up an increasingly frequent analogy when we talk aboutbusiness: "
it is not up to the tobacco industry which decides to propose solutions against cancer: it is the legislation which obliges it
”.
Read alsoFacebook, Messenger and Instagram users affected by an outage
According to the whistleblower, the law must now focus on forcing technology companies to open databases to independent researchers, and to organize "
tests
" on the ability of platforms to moderate content.
“
With social networks, which play a distribution role, the safeguards have disappeared.
However, not all changes are possible or positive
, concludes Sophie Zhang.
You always have to ask yourself why things were the way they were before.
"
