(LifeSiteNews) — A software engineer at Facebook’s parent company Meta has been caught on undercover video admitting that one of the world’s biggest social networks “automatically demote(s)” posts critical of Democrat Vice President and presidential nominee Kamala Harris with just three weeks to go before the election.
On Wednesday, O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) published video of a conversation with Meta senior software engineer Jeevan Gyawali, who candidly detailed the process to what he failed to realize was an undercover journalist.
BREAKING: Senior Meta Engineer Reveals Anti-Kamala Posts Are “Automatically Demoted,” Admits Shadowbanning Tactics
“Say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris is unfit to be a president because she doesn’t have a child, that kind of sh*t is automatically demoted,”… pic.twitter.com/4DSkvzvKmO
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 16, 2024
“Say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris is unfit to be a president because she doesn’t have a child, that kind of s*** is automatically demoted,” he said. “The person would not be notified” of the ensuing drop in the amount of engagement and impressions the post received as a result.
In fact, he went on, “There is a SWAT team that’s already set up since April … just to think about all the scenarios of how the platform could be abused” in the name of supposedly protecting democracy.
Gyawali further claimed that Facebook does indeed have the power to influence the outcome of the presidential election and that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is “100 percent” in favor of continuing to use that power on behalf of Democrats despite recent public comments to the contrary.
OMG leader James O’Keefe added that he called Gyawali for comment afterward, to which the software engineer panicked and hung up:
James O’Keefe contacted Jeevan Gyawali to request comment regarding hidden camera footage in which Gyawali discusses Meta’s censorship practices. Upon hearing the details, Gyawali responded, “Ah, f*ck,” before quickly ending the call.
His comment speaks for itself. pic.twitter.com/niqckI258U
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 16, 2024
For years, conservatives and other dissenters from left-wing orthodoxy have criticized the world’s largest online information and communications platforms, including Facebook, Google, and (until ownership changed hands in late 2022) Twitter, for using their vast influence to slant the news, sources, ideas, and arguments their users see and share through their services. One of their chief rationales for doing so was to prevent “misinformation” from influencing elections, which critics denounce as merely a pretext to sway elections in their favor.
The most dangerous aspect to the issue is the extent to which the government actively encourages private companies to censor disfavored speech, something in which emails, public statements, congressional investigation, leaked documents, and even open admissions have implicated the Biden administration.
In May, Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia indicated that the White House resumed “asking” social media companies about content it wants suppressed after a number of U.S. Supreme Court justices indicate they were favorable to the administration’s position in Murthy v. Missouri, which concerned whether the government’s appeals to platforms to delete objectionable content change private content decisions into violations of the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. The Court dismissed the case on standing grounds in June.