TheQuartering [5/25/2021]
Facebook is garbage.
Whistleblowers from Facebook are alleging that the tech giant is pushing an effort to censor content expressing vaccine hesitancy on its platform.
New reporting from Project Veritas shows leaked internal memo explaining “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion” which shows the “goal” is to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy.”
Another leaked document addressed “Borderline Vaccine (BV) Framework” that delves into how to classify such content with another expressed “goal” of to “identify and tier the categories of non-violating content that could discourage vaccination in certain contexts, thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal,” adding “We have tiered these by potential harm and how much context is required in order to evaluate harm.”
“Facebook uses classifiers in their algorithms to determine certain content… they call it ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ And without the user’s knowledge, they assign a score to these comments that’s called the ‘VH Score,’ the ‘Vaccine Hesitancy Score,’” one Facebook “insider” told Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe. “And then based on that score will demote or leave the comment alone depending on the content within the comment.”
The insider, who is described by O’Keefe as a “data center technician” for Facebook, revealed that the tech giant was running a “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.