Meta revokes job offer to sextortion expert after he publicly criticizes Instagram
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 an 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“The only reason I can think of for the offer being rescinded is me trying to shine a light on this big issue of these crimes happening on Instagram, and Instagram doing little to prevent it so far,” said Paul Raffile.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 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.
