Why a Facebook employee said no to $64,000 severance pay

Sophie Zhang worked as a data scientist at Facebook and her primary task was to find out fake accounts that could impact elections all over the world. However, she was fired last year for poor performance and Facebook offered a severance package of $64,000 (about Rs 45 lakh). While offering the severance package, Facebook reportedly wanted her to sign a non-disparagement agreement. In other words, if she took the money then she couldn’t criticise Facebook or its employees publicly.

According to a detailed interview of Zhang in the MIT Technology Review, she wrote a memo detailing how she identified several countries, including India, Afghanistan, Mexico among others, where through fake accounts politicians were able to mislead people and gain power.