Sophie Zhang, a data scientist-turned-whistleblower who worked at Facebook between 2018 to 2020, will likely not get to testify before the Standing Committee on Communication and Information & Technology.
"It's been 13 months since I came forward as a whistleblower, and 6 months since the Lok Sabha asked for Speaker Om Birla to approve my testimony," she said.
In November 2021, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, chairperson of the committee, had said that he had sought permission from the Speaker to allow Zhang to depose before the panel, since in person testimonies by witnesses from outside India requires the consent of the Speaker.
However, at the last committee meeting, Tharoor said that the Speaker’s office has neither granted nor denied permission for the deposition, The Hindu reported.
Zhang, who worked with the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team, found that Facebook allowed political manipulation across 25 countries, including India.
Zhang says she wrote a 7,800-word internal memo that was leaked to the press, after which she testified privately to the INGE committee of the European Parliament on 2020.
In 2021, she went public with The Guardian and testified before the British parliament.
"In India during late 2019 and early 2020, I found an eventual total of five separate networks of fake accounts across the political spectrum supporting the INC (two), AAP (one), and BJP (two)," she wrote in a Reddit post.
She added...
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