A former Facebook employee, who shared her discovery of a “deboosting” code found on the pages of popular conservatives, claimed she didn’t see the same censorship against “independent figures on the left,” like the Young Turks.
During her interview with Project Veritas, the former insider, who left Facebook in 2018, claimed she found things which were “troubling” at Facebook, including “deboosting” code against conservatives, and subsequently decided to make them public. The purpose of the “Deboost” code seems to be reducing the distribution of livestream videos, ensuring fewer people viewed them.
According to Project Veritas’ investigative report, Facebook used the “deboost” code against conservative commentator Mike Cernovich, and other conservative pages.
The former insider told Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe that every time she would see the deboost code on someone’s account, Facebook engineer Danny Ben David’s name would always be next to it.
“When it says ‘reduce live distribution,’ I’m not a programmer, but I can read English just fine,” the insider declared. “When I see ‘reduce live distribution,’ it means preventing the distribution of this live feed.”
O’Keefe further revealed that the word Sigma, which appeared next to the deboosting code, is typically used by Facebook to limit the reach of content when users may be suicidal, or self-harming.
“The Sigma code was written in 2017, and shortly thereafter, it appears deboost went political,” O’Keefe proclaimed.
The Facebook insider told O’Keefe that she “would see it appear on several different conservative pages,” but didn’t see the same on independent left-wing pages.
“Once I started looking at it I saw it on Mike Cernovich’s page, saw it on Steven Crowder’s page, as well as the Daily Caller’s page… These were actions which were being taken without the users knowing,” she explained. “I was like, maybe this is an independent versus mainstream thing. Maybe independent figures on the left are experiencing the same kind of deboosting. But I didn’t see that. I looked at the Young Turks page, I looked at Colin Kaepernick’s page, none of them had received the same deboost comment on their account.”
The Project Veritas report also revealed the political biases of Facebook engineers who impact account on the platform.
You can read the full documents and watch the video at Project Veritas.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter, or like his page at Facebook.
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