Investigative journalist James O’Keefe from Project Veritas on Monday released a bombshell video of two Facebook insiders blowing the whistle on the tech giant’s effort to secretly censor — on a global scale — COVID vaccine questions and concerns.
The Facebook whistleblowers alleged the company is pushing an initiative to censor vaccine hesitancy on its platform.
According to new leaked documents, the social media giant uses algorithms to target users who disseminate messaging that runs counter to the company’s political ideology and vaccine narrative — even if the comments are factually accurate.
An internal memo obtained by Project Veritas explained “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” O’Keefe told Sean Hannity on Monday that Facebook initiated a “beta” test for the algorithm that classifies some users under two incremental tiers of what they dub “vaccine hesitancy” or a “VH Score,” and does so without the user’s knowledge.
The stated goal of the new feature is to “drastically reduce user exposure” to “VH” comments, O’Keefe’s team reported, and decrease “other engagement of VH comments including create, likes, reports [and] replies.”
“Based on that VH score, we will demote or leave the comment alone depending on the content within the comment,” an anonymous whistleblower said.
The insider, who is described by O’Keefe as a “data center technician” for Facebook, revealed the tech giant was running the “test” on 1.5% of its 3.8 billion users with the focus on the comments sections on “authoritative health pages.”
“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page, before you even see it,” the insider told O’Keefe.
Another leaked document addressed “Borderline Vaccine Framework,” which classifies content with another expressed “goal” to “identify and tier the categories of non-violating content that could discourage vaccination in certain contexts, thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal.” The framework states: “We have tiered these by potential harm and how much context is required in order to evaluate harm.”
The ratings are divided into two tiers: “Alarmism & Criticism” and “Indirect Vaccine Discouragement,” which includes celebrating vaccine refusal and “shocking stories” that may deter others from getting vaccinated even if events or facts are potentially or actually true.
The algorithm flags key terms in comments to determine whether or not it can remain in place, but allows human “raters” to make a ruling if the algorithm cannot do so itself.
“What’s remarkable about these private documents that Facebook has not wanted you to see until tonight is that ‘Tier 2’ [violation] says even if the facts are true that you will be targeted and demoted — your comments will be targeted and demoted,” O’Keefe said.
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