For over six months, former Facebook (now Meta) employee-turned-whistleblower Sophie Zhang has been waiting for an approval from Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to provide her testimony on how the platform was manipulated by political entities to influence elections in India. She still hasn't heard back.
Zhang was a data analyst with Facebook from January 2018 to September 2020, when she was eventually fired. Last year, she made some stark revelations about the company she worked for. Governments around the world were abusing Facebook to gain political advantage - fake accounts run by paid workers were used to drive the popularity of political leaders and their parties. Out of the many countries she caught engaging in foul play, India too was involved.
"Suppose if the British Raj was able to pay a large number of people to drown out the voices of those who demanded independence, India might still be a dominion of Great Britain," Zhang told BOOM in an interview. She uses this analogy to explain how a large number of fake accounts were being mobilised by political parties to suppress and drown out genuine voices on Facebook.
However, after more than a year since her findings, not much has been done. The platform continues to be abused for politics, and the actions taken by the company, especially in India, have been severely inadequate.
BOOM spoke to Sophie Zhang to understand the extent of abuse on Facebook that drives false political engagement and its possible repercussions.
Disclaimer: BOOM is part of Facebook's third-party fact-checking programme.
What Is Fake Engagement?
"Fake engagement team really was a spam team, in the broader definition of the word spam. The problem is not that bad in small numbers, but needs to be addressed in high volume," said Zhang.
This phenomenon is quite common on social media platforms, not just on Facebook, but also on Twitter. When the number of likes, comments and shares on a post are inflated, either using bot accounts or through people using fake accounts, it is fake engagement.
When Zhang joined Facebook in early 2018, she was mostly looking for scripted activities by bot accounts. It was closer to her job description and also easier to find, but such activities were ineffective, she said.
Zhang used an analogy to explain this fake engagement phenomenon: "Imagine if BOOM decided to replace an author with a computer script to write articles for its platform, this computer script would be able to create a vast amount of articles, all of which would be complete garbage that no one would ever read."
"I certainly found a good amount of it leading up to the 2019 general elections in India. I made sure to have them removed, but then I chose not to focus on this sort of scripted activities because frankly, it's not very effective," she added.
Instead, Zhang feels the real problem lies with well-coordinated networks of fake accounts being run by real people, which is much harder to catch, and has a much larger impact than bots.
In India, these networks are often referred to by the term 'IT Cell'.
Undermining Democracy Through Fake Accounts
Providing another analogy to explain the dangers of IT Cell activities, Zhang said, "Imagine if during the Emergency, supporters of Indira Gandhi were able to organise fake accounts to drown out the voices of the opposition, the Emergency might never have ended."
She added, "Historically, dictators have not been able to respond when people went out on the streets. Because in the real world, there is no way for a small group of people to impersonate hundreds of 1000s of minions."
However, on the internet, it is entirely possible for a single person to run multiple accounts on social media. A small group of people, thus, can pass off for a much larger voice, almost appearing as a majority.
A quick look at the comment section of a popular politician like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, will exemplify Zhang's point well. While there are largely positive, any negative comment is flooded with trolling and harassment.
During her time at Facebook, she discovered multiple governments, such as those in Honduras and Azerbaijan, engaging in such malicious activities to influence elections.
"It's become an arms race…"
In November last year, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who led the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology, tweeted out that he had sought permission from the Speaker of Lok Sabha, Om Birla, to allow for Sophie Zhang's deposition.
"It's been more than six months since the Lok Sabha officially wanted to invite my testimony, and refer that request to the Speaker. He has refused to respond. So effectively, it is an answer. And the answer is no," said Zhang. Tired of waiting, she is now spilling the beans to the media on how Indian citizens are duped on a regular basis when it comes to political engagement on the platform.
In India, it is well understood that nearly every political party has an IT Cell to inflate the popularity of their respective parties and leaders on social media, albeit at a different scale for every different party.
During her time at Facebook, Zhang was able to track down five different networks of such fake accounts being run by real people. Two of them belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party, two of them belonged to the Congress, and one belonged to the Aam Aadmi Party.
Elections have now become extremely competitive in India, with billions of dollars being spent overall on major election cycles. Shortly after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, a report by the Centre of Media Studies estimated that Rs. 60,000 crore (nearly $8 billion) was spent on election campaigns by different parties and other entities.
Also Read | CMS Report: BJP Spent Rs. 27,000 cr On The Most Expensive Indian Election Till Date
So if it becomes common knowledge that fake accounts run by IT Cells on social media can provide a clear advantage, it is likely that every party will try to get in on the action.
If any specific party gives up on that tool, their rivals will still benefit from it and leave them behind, she said.
"It's become an arms race, that is no more beneficial for the Indian people than the US-Soviet arms race was beneficial for the people around the world. And yet, it's going to continue in and expected to grow indefinitely," she added.
What Is Facebook Doing About It?
Facebook has not done nearly enough to address this issue and has tried to brush it under the carpet, said Zhang.
For one, the company fired her when she tried to go out of her way to bring this malicious use of the platform to public knowledge. Also, the company's response to the issue varied depending on the country.
"When I caught the government of Honduras red-handed, it took almost a year with my repeated pressings for Facebook to actually do anything about it and take it down. When I caught the government of Azerbaijan red-handed, it took more than a year for Facebook to act. There was a long delay, but eventually, they took some kind of action," she said.
She added, "In some cases, like in that of Albania, they never took any action at all. In the case of Azerbaijan, they only took down the accounts temporarily, but they are still active today."
However, in the case of India - a crucial market for the company - the response was a lot different. "For the most part, Facebook responded much quicker than they did in Honduras, for example," she said. But the response was not the same for every network she detected.
Unfair Advantage For Those In Power
"I was eventually able to get four out of the five IT Cells I found taken down (two Congress IT Cells, one BJP IT Cell, and one AAP IT Cell). But for the fifth one, the one supporting a BJP MP, I never got the response," Zhang added.
She said that she took this matter up repeatedly, with various people, but every single time the result was the same - there was no response on any action on the network supporting the BJP MP.
"After a certain point, the coincidence started piling up. And so if I had to personally guess, I would say that because this person was a member of parliament, they (Facebook) did not want to hurt the relationship with the Indian government. And they did not want to say no, because they would have looked absolutely terrible to refuse to take down this blatant violation of their terms of service. And so they did the only thing that they could, which was refused to answer," she said.
And her guess is not too far off the mark.
In August 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook overlooked infringements of its own rules on hate speech by members of the ruling-BJP, to avoid backlash by the government.
The article stated that Facebook India's Public Policy head Ankhi Das advised the platform against taking action on hate speech by members of the BJP, to avoid "damaging the company's business prospects in the country".
The article specifically mentioned videos of BJP leader T. Raja Singh being flagged for hate speech and being marked as dangerous by Facebook employees. The videos in question showed Singh saying that Rohingya Muslims should be shot, that Muslims are traitors, and that mosques should be demolished. The suggestion was made to permanently ban him from the platform, according to WSJ. However, it mentions that Das opposed applying hate speech to Singh's videos, thus letting him remain on the platform.
Also Read | WSJ Exposé On Facebook & BJP Triggers Political Row In India
If the company decided to not take action on an IT Cell supporting a BJP MP, it would be congruent with its decision to not take action against hate speech by members of the same party. According to Zhang, this makes matters worse.
"If they (platform rules) were enforced equally, then no side would really gain an advantage, and the Indian leaders might be able to come to an agreement. They might be able to agree to unilateral disarmament. But here, the party in power gets an advantage, and it is hard for someone to win and give up on an advantage," she mentions.
Meanwhile, IT Cell activities on Facebook continue to thrive unchecked, sometimes taking the form of trolling and harassment of genuine people who voice their dissent on the platform.
BOOM has reached out to Meta for comment on Zhang's allegations, and the article will be updated upon getting a response.