A Meta engineer claimed that Facebook has been “automatically demoting” posts critical of Kamala Harris in a sting operation.
Senior software engineer Jeevan Gyawali was caught on hidden camera while on a date discussing how Meta’s algorithms and content moderation practices reduce the visibility of certain political posts without notifying users.
He gave an explanation to the unknown woman sitting across the table, saying that if someone posts about Harris “not being fit to be president because she doesn’t have a child,” that “shit is automatically demoted.” ‘
Gyawali, 32, also said Meta has the ability to influence the 2024 election, claiming that CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to use that power to help Democrats.
Sources confirmed to DailyMail.com that Gyawali appeared in the video, but denied that Meta had been downgrading anti-Kamala posts.
The covert operation was carried out by investigative journalist James O’Keefe and O’Keefe Media Group, which shared the hidden camera footage online.
Gyawali is said to have connected with the woman on the dating app Bumble and the two met at a restaurant. The location is unknown, but Gyawali lives in New York City.
Senior software engineer Jeevan Gyawali claimed that Meta “automatically demotes” anti-Kamala Harris posts and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg agrees with the practices.
The video begins with the engineer explaining what type of posts are automatically demoted.
“Let’s say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris (not being fit to be president because she doesn’t have a child), that kind of shit is automatically demoted,” Gyawali said.
When his date asked him about a scenario in which right-wing groups created Instagram or Facebook groups to spread anti-Kamala content, Gyawali instantly responded: “That will all be downgraded, 100 percent.”
Gyawali later admitted that when posts critical of Harris are demoted, the user is not notified that future posts will be less visible on Facebook.
The woman, who is an investigative journalist, asked the engineer if Meta is banning users “for their anti-Kamala Harris posts.”
“That’s also called Shadowbanning,” he asked to which Gyawali replied, “Shadowbanning, yes.”
“So, you’ll see a drop in impressions and engagement, but wouldn’t officials be warned about the reasons?” the journalist asked.
“Correct,” Gyawali replied.
According to Meta’s policy, when Pages share content that a fact-checker has flagged as “False,” “we notify them that their shared post will be demoted, regardless of whether they are the original publisher of that content.”
Gyawali went on to state that Meta has an “Integrity Team” that has developed “civic classifiers.”
Gyawali met the woman, who is an investigative journalist, on the dating app Bumble. He has since deactivated his Facebook account.
“The basic level of the defense system that Facebook has built now is… they’ve built these things called civic classifiers, a large model that’s been trained on civic content, so anything that detects that it has civic content, it’s like degraded,” he explains.
“That means that if something is related to political content, it is automatically not shown,” he added when asked to define “civic classifiers.”
He went on to talk about a ‘SWAT team’ created by Meta in April, designed ‘to think through all the scenarios of how the platform could be abused.’
Andy Stone, communications director at Meta, told DailyMail.com: “I don’t know what the reference to the SWAT team is.”
“If you’re referring to the Meta Election Operations Center, that’s also something we’ve been public about for years,” Stone continued.
The Election Operations Center, created in February, includes a team that addresses misinformation around the election and shows “less political content of all types and points of view because users have told us they want to see less,” Stone shared on a publication by X. .
In a more shocking moment, the woman asked Gyawali if Meta has the ability to influence elections, to which he immediately responded “Yes” and then nodded when asked if Zuckerberg was on board with the idea. .
The reporter then asked if the CEO planned to help Democrats.
“Yes… 100 percent,” Gyawali replied confidently.
Stone said: “As for the date night claims about Mark Zuckerberg, I can’t blame the guy for trying to impress his date by suggesting he knows what Mark is thinking – he’s probably not the first or last employee to try.”
In the video, the engineer claims that Zuckerberg is using Meta’s ability to influence elections to help Democrats.
DailyMail.com has contacted Gyawali for comment. His LinkedIn and Facebook pages have since been deleted.
The video comes just two months after Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook censored “COVID misinformation” at the request of the Biden administration.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan published on August 26, Zuckerberg confessed that the Biden administration was “wrong” to require Facebook to censor what they considered “COVID misinformation” during the pandemic.
Zuckerberg vowed that Meta will fight any future attempts at censorship and admitted that the company had “demoted” stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
He wrote that the White House “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we disagreed.”
