TMR 2022: Sophie Zhang on not being allowed to testify before India's parliament

The Facebook whistleblower talks about the personal cost of speaking up and tech reporting in India.

WrittenBy:NL Team
Date:
   

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:

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