Social media giant Facebook reportedly has a team of secret police that's entrusted with the task of catching those leaking information about the company to the press. This secret police team is headed by Indian-American Sonya Ahuja.
An unidentified former Facebook employee recently told The Guardian that he had a rendezvous with Facebook's secret police after he leaked some innocuous information to the media. The employee was called in for a meeting saying it was to discuss his promotion, but on the opposite side of the table was Facebook's investigation team.
The secret police reportedly had proof of his chats with a journalist and records of the screenshots he’d taken. “It’s horrifying how much they know," the employee told the media outlet. "You go into Facebook and it has this warm, fuzzy feeling of ‘we’re changing the world’ and ‘we care about things.’ But you get on their bad side and all of a sudden you are face to face with Mark Zuckerberg’s secret police,” he said.
Every week, Zuckerberg holds meetings in front of thousands of employees where he shares details of unreleased new products. Junior staff members and contractors are also privy to these information. Although Facebook is known for its transparency, this comes with a lot of responsibility as well.
“When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don’t need access to,” said the former employee. “The counterbalance to giving you this huge trusting environment is if anyone steps out of line, they’ll squash you like a bug.”
Recent reports reveal that Facebook's employees may have much more to worry about how their off-time activities could be perceived by their employer. The social media firm is said to have fired at least two employees in 2016 for their interaction with the media regarding two company memos.
While firing the employees, head of the secret police, Ahuja, is said to have presented copies of Google Talk conversations one of the employees had with a journalist who was his roommate years ago.
Damian Talbot