Last September, I met up with Sophie Zhang in a pandemic-abandoned WeWork in Oakland. Sophie had just been fired by Facebook. We sat at my laptop and she showed my the outrageously simple trick that an autocrat was using to harass dissidents & journalists https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
It was the equivalent of a zero-day exploit for creating fake engagement on Facebook, Sophie joked, except by that point it was more like an 800-day exploit. She'd told everyone she could find at FB about it, and no one was doing anything to fix it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
Now she's coming forward to speak out on the record about Facebook's failure to fight political manipulation on the platform.

The story includes details about how Facebook handled dozens of cases of inauthentic behavior across 25 countries. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-loophole-state-backed-manipulation
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