If you were shocked by what was revealed in the Twitter Files – I have bad news for you. What’s happening at Facebook, Google, and other tech giants is much worse.
I know this because I once worked inside Facebook and saw it firsthand.
For anyone who has worked in big tech, the Twitter Files wasn’t shocking. We see this stuff every day: tech companies colluding with government entities to suppress the voice of the American people.
When I worked at Facebook in 2017, the culture of wokeness and censorship was inescapable.
My position was to handle intellectual property claims for Facebook. This role was not intended to be political in any way, but I quickly noticed that all claims are not created equal. Certain accounts had “flags” applied to them which meant that any actions taken needed to be cleared by higher-ups. Ticketing systems keep track of these internal conversations, and the outcomes at Facebook – much like those at Twitter – always rendered the same result: a clear bias towards one side of the aisle.
What began as a casual observation became an obsession where I dove into internal Facebook groups that function similarly to the ones that a regular Facebook user would use. Here I found employees with a very clear activist agenda who would make policy decisions on who to “deboost” or how to label conservatives as “trolls.”
Not knowing where else to turn, I went to Project Veritas. Yes, I was the first Project Veritas “insider.” Eventually, I went on to work for them as an undercover journalist and uncovered more collusion, or as they would call it, collaboration, between Big Tech companies and politicians. I will never forget how Jen Gennai, the former head of Google Trust and Safety, proudly boasted about how Google was using machine learning to “prevent the next Trump situation.”
This was in 2019. The “situation” referred to Trump being elected in the first place and had nothing to do with any real or perceived acts of violence or terror. These tech executives, removed from the reality the rest of the country faced, decided from their insular bubble that they knew best.
They allowed relationships with law enforcement designed for legitimate purposes – such as to fight the exploitation of minors and prevent the sale of drugs or other illegal activities – to turn into a collaborative environment that far exceeded the scope of legitimate functions of the FBI. In cases such as former deputy counsel Jim Baker, he abused his power to spread misinformation and suppress true and accurate reporting.
Actors such as Baker, Yoel Roth, and Vijaya Gadde view half the country as disruptive, so they gladly bent the rules and made arbitrary decisions to de-platform legitimate political discourse. The number of biased “content moderation” instances are endless and not limited to Twitter.
For example, on Facebook, you were not allowed to post links to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund – a teenager who would ultimately be acquitted of all charges brought against him – however, you are free to post links and donate to efforts by convicted killers to overturn their sentences.
Twitter as a platform is on the smaller end, with under 250 million active daily users, of which 10% generate 90% of the content, according to the new “Chief Twit” Elon Musk. In contrast, Facebook (run by parent company Meta) still has 1.9 billion active users. That is over five times the entire population of the United States.
Simply due to the sheer size of Facebook, it’s clear that their censorship has many more tentacles than Twitter. I exposed parts of it already when I told my story to Project Veritas in 2019, but Americans deserve the whole unfiltered truth. They deserve the Facebook Files.
The Facebook Files are the key to so many crucial but unanswered questions. What were the conversations that went on behind the scenes? Are political actors in the FBI or Biden administration exerting undue influence? What objective standards are applied, if any?
Journalists and elected officials have an opportunity to put aside their personal feelings and provide the truth the American people deserve. Otherwise, our only option for transparency will be to continue to rely on the efforts of whistleblowers and eccentric billionaires.