Report: Leaked Documents Show Tech Giant Making Efforts to Censor 'Vaccine Hesitancy'
Project Veritas released a new report on Monday night that alleges Facebook is silencing COVID-19 vaccine skeptics.
Two anonymous Facebook employees leaked internal memos to the investigative nonprofit to prove the social media company has tested algorithms to track and suppress those resistant to the coronavirus vaccine.
“It doesn’t match the narrative,” one insider explained, according to Project Veritas. “The narrative being, get the vaccine, the vaccine is good for you.
“Everyone should get it. And if you don’t, you will be singled out.”
According to the report, the goal was to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy (VH) in comments.”
“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it,” one insider added.
“It doesn’t matter if the comments are true, factual or represent reality,” Project Veritas reported. “The comment is demoted, buried and hidden from view of the public if it clashes with this system.”
In response to the report, a Facebook representative claimed it was part of a previously announced campaign against vaccine “misinformation.”
“We proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information,” the representative said.
Facebook announced in March its plans to label certain posts about the coronavirus vaccines.
“We’re continuing to expand our efforts to address COVID-19 vaccine misinformation by adding labels to Facebook and Instagram posts that discuss the vaccines,” the post said.
“These labels contain credible information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines from the World Health Organization. For example, we’re adding a label on posts that discuss the safety of COVID-19 vaccines that notes COVID-19 vaccines go through tests for safety and effectiveness before they’re approved,” it said.
The controls are far beyond America’s borders. “This label is rolling out globally in English, Spanish, Indonesian, Portuguese, Arabic and French, and we are adding additional languages in the coming weeks,” Facebook said.
The reports are not the first social media clash for Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe.
Fox News reported in February that a Twitter representative confirmed the account @Project_Veritas was “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.”
Further, the @JamesOKeefeIII account was “temporarily locked for violating [Twitter’s] private information policy.”
“Late last night, Twitter locked Project Veritas’s and my Twitter accounts, claiming we violated Twitter Guidelines by posting a video of our journalists asking questions of Facebook’s Vice President Guy Rosen which Rosen refused to answer,” he said in a statement to The Western Journal on Feb. 11.
In April, Twitter permanently banned O’Keefe from the platform after he and his organization posted videos of an investigation into CNN.
A Twitter representative told Project Veritas that O’Keefe, who was nearing 1 million followers, would never be allowed back on the platform, while also accusing him without evidence of operating fake accounts.
The company said O’Keefe was banned “for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam.”
“A Twitter spokesperson pointed us to a section in the company’s rules which state: ‘You can’t mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts,’ and ‘you can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts,’” Project Veritas wrote in a blog post confirming its founder’s suspension.
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