<story><title>Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower&apos;s account</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-fake-engagement-whistleblower-sophie-zhang</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>varispeed</author><text>The problem is that people are conditioned to think that if something is published then most likely it is real. 
Maybe we need to overhaul our education system and teach people about manipulation techniques, how to spot manipulative language, how to cross reference interesting information, how to assess whether the source is trustworthy and so on. Then teach about existence of PR agencies who create fake accounts and play certain characters to create an opinion.
Unfortunately governments who used to rely on their own propaganda may not like it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower&apos;s account</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/12/facebook-fake-engagement-whistleblower-sophie-zhang</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cblconfederate</author><text>Having watched the case of the azerbaijan misinformation unfolding in twitter and facebook, i m kind of surprised why this girl was fired. If anything she was uber-productive, and her account is very accurate.&lt;p&gt;I would like the investigation to continue even deeper to find the motives behind facebook&amp;#x27;s actions. This story is sadly missed in the west, a lot of crimes have been committed while the west was looking away or occupied with trivialities&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When Zhang complained about the lack of action in another internal post in December, she received a response from Rosen that was exemplary of how Facebook justified ignoring abuses in small or poor countries that had failed to garner press attention: referring to the company’s myriad prioritization frameworks.&lt;p&gt;This is certainly true (and very sad) but don&amp;#x27;t forget that evil regimes have ways to infiltrate tech companies</text></comment>