Sophie Zhang

Sophie Zhang is an American data scientist and whistleblower who formerly worked at the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team, created to deal with bot accounts, often controlled by authoritarian governments' entities.

From 2018 to 2020, while investigating those fake engagements, Zhang uncovered abusive political manipulation and opposition harassment networks in 25 countries. She testified that Facebook negligence allowed those authoritarian regimes to manipulate public discourse. Following later whistleblower Frances Haugen's testimony on Facebook's impact on children, interest toward Zhang's testimony increased with investigation from European and American legislative bodies ongoing.

Career Zhang worked at Facebook for two years as a data scientist until September 2020. President Juan Orlando Hernández - From June to July 2018, 78% of Hernández’s Facebook posts received likes that were not from real people, artificially boosting his apparent popular support by a factor of five. Zhang found the ruling party to be using thousands of Organization Pages to harass opposition parties. USA, Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, Tunisia, Mongolia, India, Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, On her departure day, she posted a 7,800-word departure message to Facebook's internal message board outlining Facebook’s failure to combat political manipulation campaigns similar to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Expansion to fight political and election manipulations was rejected due to limitation of human resources. despite its effort to project itself as a fully competent entity. who shared internal company documents with The Wall Street Journal and on October 5, 2021, testified before the United States Senate Commerce Committee's Sub-Committee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security. On October 12, 2021, Zhang told CNN she has shared documents about Facebook with a United States law enforcement agency, and that she is available to testify before Congress and is encouraged by the bipartisan support for congressional action after Haugen's testimony.

British Parliament testimony On October 14, 2021, it was announced Zhang would testify before the British Parliament on October 18, 2021, about "her work as a data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team, dealing with bot accounts, often operated by government backed agencies in countries such as Russia," according to Damian Collins, the chair of the British Parliament Online Safety Bill committee.

On October 18, Zhang testified to the British Parliament. The hearing was via video conference and was mostly filled with members working on a bill to tackle harmful online contents. Zhang stated that:

Personal life Zhang is a transgender woman; she said she was "tired of being in the closet as a transgender woman" and that was a core aspect of her identity that informed her actions at Facebook and after she left.

In August 2022, Zhang filed a complaint to the University of Michigan alleging that her father, Youxue Zhang, a professor at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, engaged in abusive contact towards her on account of her gender identity. She stated that he was active in abusive conduct in two separate instances, once in 2004 as an adolescent, and once in 2010 while she was a student at the University of Michigan. She argued that his actions violated university policy on sexual and gender-based misconduct. The complaint was dismissed by the university, with the case coordinator reasoning that the conduct alleged in the complaint did not occur in a university program or activity.