(DailyAnswer.org) – In a hidden camera investigation, employees at Meta (Facebook’s parent company) confessed to censoring conservative content and labeling many right-wing posts as “misinformation.” According to a report released by James O’Keefe of OMG Media, three Meta employees—a software engineer, a data scientist, and a machine learning expert—claimed that the company is biased against Republicans and works to limit the spread of pro-Trump posts.
Matthew Fowler, one of the software engineers, was recorded saying that Meta targets what it considers disinformation, which often comes from conservatives. “When we see pro-Trump stuff that seems off, we flag it, and it goes to another team to review and remove,” he told one of O’Keefe’s undercover reporters. Fowler admitted that his team relies heavily on mainstream news outlets for deciding what counts as misinformation. “We just trust what the media says,” he explained.
Another employee, machine learning engineer Plamen Dzhelepov, claimed that Facebook openly suppresses conservative voices. He described the company’s policy as having “the right to suppress anything” and said that most of their efforts focus on targeting “crazy conspiracy right-wing people.” According to Dzhelepov, flagged posts either get deleted or come with warnings like, “This is misinformation, probably fake.”
Michael Zoorob, a Meta data scientist, gave more insight into the process. He admitted that most posts flagged by fact-checkers are from conservative users. When asked about Facebook’s decision to censor the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election, Zoorob explained, “We just downranked it,” meaning they made it less visible in users’ feeds.
Another recent report from OMG Media revealed more about Meta’s content filtering. In that report, a senior software engineer claimed the platform reduces the visibility of posts critical of Vice President Kamala Harris, while promoting those that favor Democrats.
So far, Meta has not responded to these allegations. However, the investigation adds to ongoing concerns about how major social media platforms handle political content and whether they apply their policies fairly.
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