A video recorded by an O’Keefe Media Group undercover journalist shows a Meta senior software engineer admitting that the social media company censors users who post negative content about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Asked by an undercover journalist how Meta handles what Democrats describe as “hate speech” from Republican social media users, Jeveean Gyawali, a senior software engineer at Meta, said that Meta’s Integrity Team has developed “civic classifiers,” which he described as “a really large model that’s been trained on civic content.”
Gyawali said, “So anything that it detects to be a civic content is, like, demoted.” The software engineer added that “civic classifier” describes “political content” that is “automatically not shown.”
“Unconnected stuff is not going to show up in your feed,” Gyawali added. “Like ads I think can show up and they probably have a whole different process of vetting ads, but like, unconnected content, like, say your uncle in, like, Ohio said something about Kamala Harris is unfit to be president because she doesn’t have a child. That kind of sh-t is automatically demoted.”
Gyawali told the undercover journalist that the company’s civic classifier “is strong” and that any content that violated it would be “demoted 100 percent.”
Asked whether a “demoted” social media user would be notified of the company’s action, Gyawali said, “The person would not be notified.” Gyawali also said that if a user had multiple civic classifier violations, they would be “redlisted” and “shadowbanned.”
In the video, the undercover journalist also expressed concerns to Gyawali about a “repeat of 2016 in 2024,” prompting the Meta engineer to say that the company had set up a “SWAT team” earlier this year “just to think about all the scenarios of how the platform can be abused.” Gyawali also indicated that Meta could influence the 2024 election and that Zuckerberg would help the Democratic Party win the election.
James O’Keefe, O’Keefe Media Group founder, explained that Gyawali’s comments reflected the testimony of a Facebook whistleblower who previously told O’Keefe in 2019 that the social media platform was “deboosting” users. O’Keefe also referenced a video that showed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and another company executive discussing how they made efforts to punish “truth seekers” on social media.
O’Keefe noted that Gyawali’s revelation that Meta is continuing “practices of demoting content” comes just a couple of weeks before Election Day.
Confronted by O’Keefe over the phone regarding the comments the senior software engineer made to the undercover journalist, Gyawali said, “Ah f-ck,” and quickly ended the phone call.