The battle over social media censorship might have hit a snag after Project Veritas, the undercover journalism organization headed by James O’Keefe, released two videos in the past couple of days purporting to show Facebook content moderators unfairly targeting pro-conservative and pro-Trump posts.
Both videos show Facebook content moderators, who work for companies that are contracted by Facebook, openly admitting their dislike of President Donald Trump and his supporters and displaying no worries about targeting posts that are in opposition to the left or in support of Trump and/or Republicans.
“You don’t let any go, do you?” the Veritas journalist asked. “Like, if you see a conservative post you just get rid of it, right?”
“Yes!” the Facebook moderator replied. “I don’t give no f***s. I’ll delete it.”
Content moderator Israel Amparan freely conveyed his animus towards Trump and his supporters.
Yeah, no honestly, like every time I, like half the time when I delete people for like Trump s**t, I’m like, ‘you should be on a watch list, dude. You know, Trump supporters like to throw around like ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,” as like, you know like liberals being crazy. I like to think of it as, actually you’re the one that has f***ing ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome, because you’re losing you’re g**damn mind as soon as, because they’re just like ‘oh Trump 2020 MAGA, and it’s like, that sounds a little more deranged to me when every argument like that.
The man who came forward as a “Facebook insider” was identified as Zach McElroy.
“I saw everybody around me and I saw myself, and I did a little bit of comparing, and I thought, ‘You know, there really are not many conservatives here,” McElroy told O’Keefe. “Because there are not very many conservatives, I don’t there are very many people sticking up for the voice of conservatives at a company that handles…the flow of conversations.”
There’s a lot more, which you can watch in the video below:
As for the second video Veritas released, there was more of the same in terms of employees talking about their bias towards conservatives, Trump and his supporters. But, the main focus of the second video was on Leslie Brown, a senior HR business partner of Facebook.
In the video, Brown spoke with the Veritas journalist about the case of James Damore. Damore is the Texas man who was fired from Google in 2017 after writing a memo critiquing the company’s culture and diversity policies.
“They were able to fire him without having to worry about discrimination,” the journalist said to Brown.
“Due diligence, right, because he’s a white man. Yeah, white man. No problem. You can’t do it that easily if there are other issues,” Brown responded. “[It’s easier when they’re] White men. No has the white man’s back anymore.”
When the reporter tried to confirm what Brown just said, she replied with her belief that there is a bias against “white men.”
“That if he [Damore] chose to sue the company, that most attorneys would just laugh,” Brown said.
The “Facebook insider” on the second video was identified as Ryan Hartwig.
You can view the second video below:
Within an hour of this writing O’Keefe posted another video to Project Veritas’ YouTube video channel in which he alleges he can confirm that, as a result of the second video, Brown was fired.
“After our Facebook investigation, a senior HR business partner of Facebook, Leslie Brown has just been fired,” O’Keefe said on Thursday afternoon. “Leslie Brown sent me a text message saying quote, ‘I’ve now been fired.’”
For that video, watch below: