The Facebook whistleblower talks about the personal cost of speaking up and tech reporting in India.
After two years of being hosted online, The Media Rumble 2022 took place in Delhi on October 14 and 15 where leading media professionals, policymakers, and tech innovators got together to discuss the future of news, tech and policy.
In the session titled “Platform accountability and whistleblower”, former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Sophie Zhang spoke with Chitranshu Tewari of Newslaundry about political manipulation on social media and her experience of working on fake engagement in India.
They also discuss Zhang’s offer to testify before the Indian parliament and her experience working with tech reporters in India. She also weighed in on the recent controversy over the Wire’s reporting on Meta. “There are a number of areas where the documents don’t match up,” she says. “I don’t think there’s a single former Facebook employee who has publicly said that they believe in these documents.”
Watch.
Text by Vardhan Saklani.
Listen to the conversation here:
The media must be free and fair, uninfluenced by corporate or state interests. That's why you, the public, need to pay to keep news free.
ContributeGeneral elections are around the corner, and Newslaundry and The News Minute have ambitious plans together to focus on the issues that really matter to the voter. From political funding to battleground states, media coverage to 10 years of Modi, choose a project you would like to support and power our journalism.
Ground reportage is central to public interest journalism. Only readers like you can make it possible. Will you?