FB whistleblower accuses India bosses of bias in favour of BJP MP

NEW DELHI: A whistle-blower at Meta (previously Facebook), who was with the company’s US operations till late 2020, has disclosed purportedly internal documents alleging that the company refused to act against fake Facebook accounts that supported a Member of Parliament of the ruling BJP, even as it went ahead with blocking fake users supporting Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over the same violations.
Sophie Zhang, the former data scientist who was with Facebook between January 16, 2018, and September 4, 2020, had previously offered the documentation for consideration by the parliamentary standing committee on communications and IT, led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, although it was not taken up pending an approval by the Lok Sabha Speaker, as per her submission.
Her accusations come months after another whistle-blower and former data scientist, Frances Haugen, accused the company of being lenient on those associated with the RSS despite their pages promoting “fear mongering, (and) anti-Muslim narratives”. Haugen had also charged Facebook with having less-than-required local language editors that resulted in hate speech incidents remaining unchecked on the platform.
Zhang spoke to TOI as she released a series of internal documents, some camouflaging the names of certain internal employees, where she accuses Meta’s India public policy team of bias and favouring the BJP.
She accused Shivnath Thukral, currently public policy director at WhatsApp (Meta group company) who between November 2017 and March 2020 was in-charge of the same function at Facebook, of inaction when it came to censuring a group of inauthentic/fake accounts that supported a BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, even though Thukral recommended take-down orders on a network of fake accounts supporting the Congress in Punjab and AAP in Delhi over similar charges.
She also accused Thukral, who has deposed before the parliamentary committee regarding matters of fake accounts and social media, of committing a “serious offence” by not admitting to her authentic findings. “Why did Thukral dismiss… (the) revelations as unsubstantiated in his testimony to the Lok Sabha, when he personally approved parts of… (the) work in Delhi? Lying to the Lok Sabha under oath is a serious offense,” she said.
When contacted, a spokesperson for Meta in India said the company “fundamentally disagrees” with Zhang's “characterisation” of the company’s efforts to tackle abuse. “We have not been provided the documents and cannot speak to the specific assertions, but we have stated previously that we fundamentally disagree with Zhang's characterisation of our priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform. We aggressively go after abuse around the world and have specialised teams focused on this work… Combatting coordinated inauthentic behaviour is our priority. We're also addressing the problems of spam and fake engagement. We investigate each issue before taking action or making public claims about them.”
Speaking specifically on the allegations around Thukral, the spokesperson said, “This is a completely wrong and misleading assertion and reflects a limited understanding of how we enforce our policies. The decisions around content escalations are not made unilaterally by any one person, including any member of the India Public Policy team; rather, they are inclusive of views from different teams and disciplines within the company. The process comes with robust checks and balances built in to ensure that the policies are implemented as they are intended to be and take into consideration applicable local laws. We strive to apply our policies uniformly without regard to anyone’s political positions or party affiliations.”
Zhang alleged that while Facebook’s public policy bosses strived to maintain healthy relations with politicians from the ruling class, they were also given the charge to adjudicate on their behaviour online, giving rise to a conflict of interest.
As per Zhang, she made most of the revelations around the inauthentic accounts in September-October 2019 period, following which she raised the matter with the ‘Threat Intelligence Investigator’ of Meta who works on south Asia.
Around December 2019, she claimed to have discovered the network of fake accounts associated with a BJP’s lawmaker, and claims Meta’s investigator verified her findings for the parliamentarian’s IT cell. However, action was avoided on his personal account as indications came in that it belongs to “a high-profile Indian politician”, Zhang alleged, adding that only in May 2020, some of the accounts related to the politician were actioned.
Zhang had been terminated from the company in September 2020, though she says that officially it was blamed on poor performance, and not relating to her work in India.