Exclusive: Paul Raffile held webinar where he said app failed to protect children, and his offer was rescinded hours later
Meta revoked a job offer to a prominent cyber-intelligence analyst immediately after he criticized Instagram for failing to protect children online.
Paul Raffile had been offered a job as a human exploitation investigator focusing on issues such as sextortion and human trafficking. He had participated in a 24 April webinar on safeguarding against financial sextortion schemes, during which he criticized Instagram for allowing children to fall prey to scammers and offered possible solutions.
“The only reason I can think of for the offer being rescinded is me trying to shine a light on this big issue of these crimes happening on Instagram, and Instagram doing little to prevent it so far,” said Raffile.
Raffile was a co-organizer of the webinar, which featured the parents of four children who had died after being scammed on Instagram. Among the 350 attendees were staffers from Meta, the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), law enforcement agencies, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Visa, Google and Snap.
Raffile told the Guardian he made some quick introductory remarks at the webinar, which took less than a minute to deliver.
With a contract already signed, Raffile was due to start his new $175,000-a-year role the following Monday, but he received the call rescinding the offer within hours of the webinar concluding. Meta’s hiring manager did not share the reason for his firing, stating the directive came from “many pay-levels above us”, Raffile said.
Meta said in a statement: “It’s not accurate to imply the offer was rescinded because of the NCRI report, the webinar or the candidate’s expertise in this space.” The company did not provide a reason for rescinding Raffile’s offer.
Raffile said: “It shows that Meta is not willing to take this issue seriously. I’ve brought up legitimate concerns and recommendations, and they’re potentially unwilling to be aggressive enough to tackle this issue.”
Read the full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/16/meta-rescinds-job-offer-human-trafficking-expert
Katie McQue 