Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist and a whistleblower, has revealed the involvement of Vinod Kumar Sonkar, BJP MP of Kaushambi in Uttar Pradesh, in a large network that acted in a coordinated way to promote him ahead of the 2019 elections. She had previously accused Facebook of being reluctant to act on accounts influencing elections across various countries.
A set of documents showing parts of Facebook's internal communication were made available to media houses by Sophie, as her claims of proof of the social media giant's inaction on a network that promoted the MP even as three other networks indulging in similar activity faced action.
While working at Facebook, Sophie said she discovered four networks linked to political parties in 2019 and when she flagged them to the concerned teams inside Facebook, the team did not act on one particular network linked to a BJP MP. DH is in possession of these documents.
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Sophie, in her mail to the media houses, said that the documents were proof that action had been approved on a network of fake accounts that were linked to the MP's personal handle, however, Facebook became reluctant as soon as it discovered the MP's connection to the government.
What do the documents say?
Sophie had found four networks in December 2019—what she called the “Punjab INC cluster,” the “Kaushambi cluster” and two other networks—linked to political parties. She claimed that the Kaushambi network conducted “...
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