sophie zhang Worked as a Data Scientist in Facebook and his primary function was to find out fake accounts that can affect Election all over the world. However, he was fired last year for poor performance and Facebook offered a severance package of $64,000 (about Rs 45 lakh). While offering the severance package, Facebook reportedly wanted it to sign a non-disparity agreement. In other words, she could not publicly criticize Facebook or its employees if she took the money.
According to a detailed interview of Zhang MIT Technology Review, she wrote a memorandum in which she identified several countries including India, Afghanistan, Mexico where through fake accounts politicians were able to mislead people and gain power. She said Facebook did little to solve the problem, despite its efforts to bring it under the leadership of the company.
After being fired, she was debating whether or not to write the memo. “This was probably his last chance to put enough internal pressure on the leadership to start taking the problems seriously,” the report said. It was then that he offered a $64,000 severance package as he wrote the memo that contained sharp and relevant criticism of Facebook.
In further interviews, she once again claimed that Facebook was not doing enough about the problem. And it was facilitating election interference.
Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne vehemently denied these claims in a statement. “For the countless press interviews she has conducted since leaving Facebook, we fundamentally disagree about Ms. Zhang’s priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform,” he said.
.