Former Facebook employee says conservative content suppressed on site; docs cite BlazeTV host's video

A former Facebook employee claims that the social media company has numerous policies in place that disproportionately target conservative content in ways that suppress its reach, and Facebook documents showed that a BlazeTV host's video was cited as an example of "destructive behaviors," according to Project Veritas.

A Facebook-authored presentation used a video by BlazeTV's Lauren Chen, who hosts the show "Roaming Millennial Uncensored," to illustrate how "red-pilling normies to convert them to their worldview" is a "troll behavior."

"Red-pilling" is a term used online to refer to someone presenting a harsh, brutal truth about something. A "normie" is someone who is not a member of a particular subculture or political ideology. Essentially, the presentation is implying that a video trying to convince someone to adopt a conservative viewpoint can be considered "destructive."

"That video was very targeted toward being persuasive. The fact that they chose that out of all my videos; I've said more inflammatory things than what was said in that video," Chen told TheBlaze. "But I think what makes that video stand out is that it's directed at changing people's opinions, and I think that's what they're scared of, they can call it moderating troll behavior, but they're just trying to stifle debate and anything they think can be persuasive toward conservatism."

The link in the Facebook presentation goes to a video on Chen's YouTube page titled "Why Social Justice is CANCER" from July 2017.

Why Social Justice is CANCER | Identity Politics, Equality & Marxismwww.youtube.com

"That video that was linked, the title is provocative, it's called 'Why Social Justice is Cancer,' but if you actually watch it, it's arguing for things like equality of opportunity and individualism and things like that, which traditionally have been pretty universal western values," Chen said. "To see that listed as trolling is really concerning to me."

Chen said she has noticed some abnormalities when posting her content on Facebook in the past, but she wanted to believe she was just being paranoid. She has recently started working with Evie Magazine, a publication she contributes to, to build her Facebook following.

"We have noticed, 'wow, that's really weird,' I invite people to articles, and I get lower engagement than pages that have fewer followers than me," Chen said. "It's really, really strange. You don't want to think, 'Oh, they're after me, it's because I'm conservative,' I think we're at a point now where it's not crazy to say we're being targeted."

Chen said she's also had issues with YouTube videos being demonetized and people reporting that they subscribe to her channel but don't receive notifications about new content.

The author of the presentation is engineer and data scientist Seiji Yamamoto, who leads Facebook's "News Feed Reduction Strategy."

Yamamoto reportedly wrote a post emphasizing the need to focus on "content near the perimeter of hate speech," which the former Facebook employee interpreted to mean "things that aren't actually hate speech but that might offend somebody."

Other documents obtained by the former Facebook employee and published by Project Veritas refer to existing strategies to "delete bad content" or "demote bad content," and to "trigger the special features" such as limiting bandwith, forced glitches, and failed comment uploads, "leading up to important elections" as a precautionary measure.

Facebook responded to the former employee's allegations in a statement to 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."

Chen said she is now considering how to move forward in light of this report, but she doesn't intend to stand by idly if content by her and other conservatives is being suppressed online.

"We're not ruling anything out right now. I have different organizations I've been trying to work with to grow the Facebook page so I can share content on it, like with Evie Magazine or BlazeTV, I hope to be able to share my stuff on there" Chen said. "So this isn't just affecting me, by proxy they're targeting all these other outlets as well just for supporting me.

"We're definitely not going to forget about it like it's no big deal, because it's a pattern of behavior at this point that does need to be called out," Chen said.