mEET Sophie zhan“L a data scientist who got fired from Facebook in September 2020. Her 7,800word farewell memo on her last day got leaked to Buzzfeed. She went public in the Guardian “because everything else has failed.” Zhang introduced herself on Reddit as a whistleblower, who “worked in my spare time to catch state-sponsored troll farms in multiple nations. I became a whistleblower because FB (Facebook) didn’t care. Ask me anything.” Working for Facebook for about six months, she realized that Juan Orlando Hernández, the president of Honduras, was amassing large numbers of fake likes on the content he posted to his 500,000 followers on Facebook. She explained in her interview with the Guardian that most fake likes on

Facebook come from fake or compromised user accounts. The thing was Hernández was receiving thousands of likes from Facebook pages, Facebook profiles for businesses, organizations or public figures that had been created to resemble user accounts, complete with names, profile pictures and job titles. The intention is to distort the public’s perception of how popular a post is. In addition, the use of fake engagement could influence how that content performs in the unique news feed algorithm. When talking about Facebook’s attention marketplace, it is like having a kind of counterfeit currency.

Of course, there were questions about the Philippine troll farms. The Senate committee who plans to conduct a hearing on trolls could learn something from Zhang. An example she cited was that Facebook ignored several Filipino unattributed political bot farms, which she flagged in October 2019 until it made five likes on a few of President Trump’s posts in February 2020. She added a disclaimer that five likes are not significant but became important because of Trump. A week later, that bot farm (not the others) was taken down. “While I think Filipino people are just as important as Americans, Facebook sadly begged to differ,” she added.

To be clear about terminology and avoid confusion, she defined troll farms as “real people who sit at desks all day to pretend to be lots of people who don’t exist to spread messages.” A bot farm is “computer scripts pretending to be real people to do things.” What she found in the Philippines is most likely under the “automated behavior pattern” or what Facebook calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” In line with Facebook’s commitment to authenticity, they “don’t allow people to misrepresent themselves on Facebook, use fake accounts, artificially boost the popularity of content, or engage in behaviors designed to enable other violations under our community standards.” Facebook’s tendency to focus on global activity posing public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm, including the lack of resources contributed to the failure to stop malicious activities.

In the Guardian interview, she mentioned that Facebook allowed its self-interest to enter discussions of rule enforcement. For example, the staff in 2019 were deliberating on publicizing an opposition politician in the Philippines receiving low-quality, scripted fake engagement. Despite not knowing whether it involved the politician acquiring the fake likes, they took no action after Zhang pointed out that it was possible Duterte, or his supporters were attempting to “frame” the opposition politician by purchasing fake likes to make them look corrupt. Zhang argues that “Facebook needs to create a separation between the staff responsible for enforcing Facebook’s rules and those responsible for maintaining good relationships with the government.” The “possibility of framing by opponents” is just that — a possibility, not a certainty, Zhang elaborated.

Concerned over the growing number of troll farms, Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd and Senator Panfilo Lacson alerted Facebook Philippines. There is a possibility that these troll farms are setting it up for the 2022 presidential elections. While waiting for Facebook or other social media companies to take appropriate action, Lacson believes it would be better to develop the habits that would deny these trolls their prize. Lacson suggested the three-point habit of resist, report, and block. You could also read my tips on “Dealing with trolls” (Oct. 13, 2019). Facebook needs to provide more resources to remove troll armies and coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Mr. Tony M. Maghirang's column "Tech Space" for July 25, 2021 has been posted online at www.manilatimes.net. This week, Mr. Maghirang talks about "Building a solid case for cloud-based business."