If you have had any inkling in the last year or so that social media companies are silencing dissent when it comes to the Chinese coronavirus and the vaccine, Project Veritas may have some answers for you.
According to two “Facebook whistleblowers” that have reportedly come forward to speak about what the social media giant has been doing concerning its algorithms during the pandemic, Facebook has adjusted their algorithm to demote content in order to “Drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy (VH) in comments.”
Veritas founder James O’Keefe spoke with the whistleblowers under the condition of anonymity and was given “internal documents” that have circulated within Facebook.
“They’re [Facebook] trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page, before you even see it,” the whistleblower told O’Keefe.
The whistleblower then went into detail about how Facebook manipulates their algorithms to control the content both Facebook and Instagram users see in their timeline.
So basically when they write this algorithm that goes through Facebook content, and it looks for certain keywords that are related to vaccination, or, you know, not getting a vaccine and stuff like that, and it gives it a score. And the VH score means vaccine hesitancy, which is defined as being hesitant to get a vaccine, but not just like, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ It’s even, ‘Well I saw a study that said that someone died that got the vaccine.’ That’s vaccine hesitancy.
The thing is that most people think of when talking about algorithms is that it’s just some computer, or “robot” as the whistleblower put it, combing Facebook and Instagram for what the algorithms indicate they should be looking at.
However, the whistleblower’s document about the alleged “VH score” algorithm indicated that some of the Facebook employees that worked on the algorithm in question “are only a few clicks away” from CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself in the Facebook hierarchy.
The other “whistleblower” compared what Facebook does to its users to a “relationship with somebody that’s controlling and abusive in a sense.”
“It’s kind of like having a relationship with somebody that’s controlling and abusive in a sense, like an abusive partner, not allowing their spouse to speak out about the things that are going on in their marriage or their relationship and limiting their voice,” the second whistleblower told O’Keefe. “It’s very damaging from that sense.”
In response to Veritas’ attempts for comment, Facebook only responded to the leaked documents as a whole, but didn’t address any of the questions Veritas asked concerning the documents themselves.
“We proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information,” a “Facebook company spokesperson” responded, according to Project Veritas.
For the full Project Veritas video, watch below: