Is Facebook Actively Demoting Conservative Posts?

To say Facebook has had a rough go of it over the last year would be an understatement. Earlier this week, content moderators exposed the psychological trauma the job can cause and the company is also facing the possibility of a multi-billion dollar fine from the FTC for privacy violations.

The streak looks to continue, this time with accusations that Facebook actively demotes posts by conservative media outlets and individuals.

Via The Verge, right-wing group Project Veritas published 60-pages of documents, containing screenshots of employee discussions on moderation efforts, and a video claiming that Facebook actively demoted posts that may have had some kind of conservative slant to it. The documents came from a former Facebook contractor who worked for Project Veritas and was fired from Facebook one year ago.

“It’s clear that Facebook is targeting the language of the right,” Veritas founder James O’Keefe says in the video.

According to the former employee’s findings, she discovered a feature known as “actiondeboostlivedistribution” attached to some conservative media outlet posts.

“She claimed this is responsible for throttling the circulation for the users it is attached to and directly interferes with posts. It is capable of disabling notifications and shares for example,” reported the Daily Mail. “The activist group also claims there is no evidence that liberal outlets are subjected to the same rules.”

In response to the published findings, a Facebook representative told The Verge, “We fired this person a year ago for breaking multiple employment policies and using her contractor role at Facebook to perform a stunt for Project Veritas...Unsurprisingly, the claims she is making validate her agenda and ignore the processes we have in place to ensure Facebook remains a platform to give people a voice, regardless of their political ideology.”

It is worth noting that O’Keefe has a history of misleading editing to support his own bias, such as videos on ACORN and NPR that were proven to be false. He was also arrested in 2010, along with three accomplices, for trying to enter a federal building dressed as telephone repairmen. He was sentenced to three years probations and 100 hours of community service.