For many years, conservative groups and individuals have claimed they are censored on social medial platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, finding proof of these allegations hasn’t always been easy. After all, these social media giants aren’t exactly going to admit to being biased. However, according to a late breaking report by Project Veritas (investigative journalist group), there is now a creditable insider report proving the company engages in political targeting.
The report includes a sit-down interview with a former Facebook insider, screenshots of Facebook employee discussions, and 60 pages of internal documents. The report proves the alleged bias against conservatives on the platform.
“I saw things going on that I personally find to be troubling,” a former Facebook employee can be heard saying in the video.
The former employee went on to add that she personally witnessed Facebook use “Action Deboost Live Distibution,” which is a technical action, on conservative pages.
“I would see (this term) appear on several different conservative pages,” she explained. “I first noticed it with an account that I can’t remember, but I remember once I started looking at it, I also saw it on Mike Cernovich’s page, saw it on Steven Crowder’s page, as well as the Daily Caller’s page. I had a couple working theories. I was like, maybe this is an independent verse mainstream thing. Maybe independent figures on the left are experiencing the same kind of deboosting. But I didn’t’ see that.”
The former employee went on to add that she “can’t speak to what exactly the actions were when it says ‘reduce live distribution.’” But, she has an idea of what it was all for.
“When I see ‘Reduce Live Distribution’ it means preventing the distribution of this life stream,'” she said.
Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe describes reduced distribution as “a method of suppression distribution. This occurs because prompts like ‘share this video’ are disabled. Interactive notifications are also disabled, and the live feed boost associated with a live streaming video on Facebook is removed. The system converts the live video into text. Machine learning classifies or identifies certain words—and bad words trigger de-boosting.”
According to the former employee, there were many posts being deboosted without the users’ knowledge. This could in essence make it harder for a conservative video on a particular issue to get as many shares as one on the other side of the political aisle. It’s simply skewing the playing field and creating a perception that liberal views are more prevalent when it fact that might not be the case at all.
Within the reports procured by Project Veritas, there was also a document entitled “Coordinating Trolling on FB.” This report was allegedly created to combat trolling on the platform. The term “troll” is an internet term used to refer to anyone who upsets or sows discord. According to the former Facebook employee, this document was clearly aimed at the right-wing meme culture on Facebook. They used terms such as overtone window, mainstream media or social justice warrior to classify a person as a troll. Within the document, it is stated that Facebook will interfere with these “troll” accounts. This is especially true before elections, meaning their content will not be seen. According to the former employee, the organization is “absolutely” trying to influence users’ political beliefs and election results.
As might be expected, when asked for a statement, Facebook doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing. They say the former employee was fired “for performing a stunt for Project Veritas.”
“We fired this person a year ago for breaking multiple employment policies and using her contractor role at Facebook to perform a stunt for Project Veritas,” the company said. “Unsurprisingly, the claims she is making validate her agenda and ignore the processes we have in place to ensure Facebook remains a platform to give people a voice, regardless of their political ideology.”
The former employee said that she hopes others come forward to provide further validation of her claims. As she states, “the public has a right to know” she went on to add “censorship on social media is not just a conservative conspiracy theory.”
~ Liberty Planet
