Facebook has landed in a pool of trouble after an ex-employee rejected the offer of a severance package worth $64,000 for keeping things confidential.
The employee, Sophie Zhang, was hired as a data scientist at Facebook and her primary task was to find out fake accounts that could impact elections all over the world.
In the first year of employment, Sophie’s work performance wasn’t satisfactory and she was fired last year.
While terminating her, Facebook offered a severance package of $64,000 as it asked her to sign a non-disparagement agreement, promising not to publicly criticize the company or its employees.
However, Sophie turned down the offer, making Facebook concerned over the consequence of the move.
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Later, 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.
Further, she mentioned that despite raising her voice against the manipulation in elections, the company wasn’t active to react to the matter.
As soon as Facebook got to know about the memo, they bartered with Sophie and offered her a handsome amount of $64,000 under severance package for retraction from claims, which she refused.
On the flip side, Facebook Spokesperson Joe Osborne denied all such activities especially the offer by the company to ex-employee.
“For the countless press interviews she’s done since leaving Facebook, we have fundamentally disagreed with Ms. Zhang’s characterization of our priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform,” he said in a statement.