A shocking new undercover video from Project Veritas exposes the rampant anti-conservative bias of Facebook’s content moderators, the employees who are responsible for deciding what posts are censored.
Zach McElroy, a former Facebook employee who worked as a content moderator in Tampa, Florida, told Project Veritas that he’s willing to testify before Congress about Facebook’s bias against Trump supporters and conservative causes.
“We are essentially in charge of what gets said and what gets stifled,” he explained of the “content moderator” position, noting that 75 to 80 percent of posts selected for moderator review by Facebook’s algorithm are from “Republican pages,” including politicians and journalists.
In the undercover footage obtained by Project Veritas, one content moderator said she deletes every Republican post that appears in her queue.
“Yes! I don’t give no f–ks. I’ll delete it,” she confirmed, revealing that she allows anti-Trump content in violation of Facebook’s policies to remain on the site.
“You gotta take it down but I leave it up,” she said. “If you see something that’s not supposed to be up, it’s probably me.”
Another content moderator, Lara Kontakos, was asked what she does when she sees posts in support of the president.
“If someone is wearing a MAGA hat, I am going to delete them for terrorism,” she said. “I think we are all doing that.”
Steve Grimmett, a content review lead, said Facebook has a “very progressive” and “anti-MAGA” culture.
“Zach McElroy’s story raises serious doubts about the Capitol Hill testimony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who gave lawmakers the impression that his company only takes down content that could cause harm, such as relating to terrorism or hate speech, but never for politics,” James O’Keefe, Project Veritas’ founding CEO, said in a statement.
“Facebook and other social media platforms are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, because they claim that unlike traditional publishers they do not actively edit content – they say they are like the phone company just stringing wires on poles,” he added. “Facebook’s $400 billion market capitalization is tied to this protection and our report shows for the first time anywhere Facebook’s robust and human-directed process for restricting the marketplace of ideas, which calls into question their CDA 230 immunity.”
U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who called for an investigation into the anti-conservative bias of Google’s search function over the weekend, addressed the new Project Veritas video during a Tuesday interview.
“I just found out about the Project Veritas video and their latest that they have brought out. And it shows how Facebook chooses to censor people that they do not agree with,” said Blackburn. “I’ve been censored more than once. Other conservatives have. I have friends that are in the conservative media business, friends that do conservative entertainment. They have all experienced censorship.”
She said the Project Veritas video proves that Facebook’s content moderators “bring their liberal bias to work with them.”
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Project Veritas-Facebook Investigation” by Project Veritas.
Editors’ note: Neil McCabe, The Tennessee Star and Star News Network National Correspondent, also serves as a contract communications manager for Project Veritas.
