{"id":540134,"date":"2021-05-25T14:26:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T18:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=540134"},"modified":"2021-05-25T15:05:21","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T19:05:21","slug":"facebook-attempts-to-silence-users-who-doubt-covid-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/facebook-attempts-to-silence-users-who-doubt-covid-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Attempts to Silence Users Who Doubt Covid Vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffacebook-attempts-to-silence-users-who-doubt-covid-vaccine%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=540134&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GetFile-275.aspx\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Facebook is attempting to silence&nbsp;coronavirus vaccine skeptics&nbsp;through an algorithm that targets and demotes their remarks on the site, according to two employees who work for the&nbsp;social media giant and leaked internal memos to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.projectveritas.com\/news\/breaking-facebook-whistleblowers-expose-leaked-internal-docs-detailing-new\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Project Veritas.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The leaked documents purportedly show that Facebook has tested a beta version of its algorithm on about 1.5% of its nearly four billion users worldwide to find those who are hesitant about the vaccines.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about these claims, a&nbsp;Facebook spokesperson told the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/05\/25\/facebook-trying-to-censor-covid-19-vaccine-skeptics-report\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New York Post<\/a>,&nbsp;\u201cWe proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the leaked memos, the vaccine hesitancy ratings are divided into three tiers, with the lowest one an explicit violation of Facebook policy. Those in the next tier are labeled as \u201cAlarmism &amp; Criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The third tier is considered \u201cIndirect Vaccine Discouragement,\u201d which includes, for example, \u201cshocking stories\u201d that have the potential to deter others from taking the vaccine, even if the stories turn out to be&nbsp;true.<\/p>\n<p>The remarks are then assigned by the algorithm, a score that could remove the comments altogether or at least have them be hidden from the \u201cmost relevant\u201d category.<\/p>\n<p>One of the anonymous Facebook workers explained to Project Veritas founder James O\u2019Keefe that based on the assigned score, \u201cwe will demote or leave the comment alone depending on the content within the comment,\u201d adding that \u201cThey\u2019re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page, before you even see it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the leaked memos describes the company&#8217;s goal as drastically reducing&nbsp;\u201cuser exposure to vaccine hesitancy in comments,\u201d emphasizing that \u201creducing the visibility of these comments represents another significant opportunity for us to remove barriers to vaccination that users on the platform may potentially encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The memo also noted that the algorithm was the only method the social media giant knew of at the time to contend with \u201cthe high prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in Health comments,\u201d and that a better \u201cdetection\u201d tool would be used when it was developed.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook has previously admitted that it may lessen the visibility of content that may not violate company policy but discourages someone from getting vaccinated by sharing information out of context, according to the New York Post.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in March that the company would add labels to posts concerning vaccines in order to fight against the spread of misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor example, we\u2019re adding a label on posts that discuss the safety of COVID-19 vaccines that notes COVID-19 vaccines go through tests for safety and effectiveness before they\u2019re approved,\u201d Zuckerberg wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook is attempting to silence\u00a0coronavirus vaccine skeptics\u00a0through an algorithm that targets and demotes their remarks on the site, according to two employees who work for the\u00a0social media giant and leaked &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2312987,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GetFile-275.aspx","fifu_image_alt":"Facebook Attempts to Silence Users Who Doubt Covid Vaccine","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-540134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/GetFile-275.aspx","fifu_image_alt":"Facebook Attempts to Silence Users Who Doubt Covid Vaccine","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2312987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}