Mark Zuckerberg
A House Republican is asking Attorney General William Barr to investigate Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly making false statements to Congress.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., charges Zuckerberg's claims to various committees in Congress that his company does not have "any bias against conservative speech, persons, policies, or politics" is false, reported Sharyl Attkisson.
The testimony happened in April 2018 at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing and later at a joint hearing of two Senate committees.
Gaetz said Zuckerberg "repeatedly and categorically denied his company engaged in bias against conservative speech, persons, policies, or politics and also denied that Facebook censored and suppressed content supportive of President Donald Trump and other conservatives."
But that conflicts with testimony from two Facebook whistleblowers, Gaetz contends.
The whistleblowers stated in a Project Veritas undercover video they worked as content moderators at Facebook and "most" of the content targeted for removal by the company's automated programs supported President Trump, Republicans or conservatism.
Here is one of the Project Veritas videos:
In the video, Steve Grimmett, a team lead at Facebook-Cognizant's content review program, likened Trump supporters to Hitler.
"One of my projects before now was, was hate," Grimmett said. "I've spent quite a bit of time looking at pictures of hate organizations, Hitler, Nazis, MAGA, you know, Proud Boys, all that stuff all day long."
MAGA was the acronym for President Trump's 2016 slogan "Make America Great Again."
A previous video shows a moderator admitting the social media giant's hostility to Trump and conservatives influences its decisions regarding content.
Gaetz said in his letter that Facebook "adjudicators were outspoken about their political bias against Republicans, and actively chose to eliminate otherwise-allowable content from the platform and from public view simply due to its political orientation. This arbitrary and capricious behavior is not done in good faith and falls outside of the express intent of §230 of the Communications Decency Act, which affords Facebook liability protection as long as the platform moderates content in 'good faith.'"
"Project Veritas’ undercover footage shows that a great deal of 'political speech' supporting the president was labeled 'hate speech,' or was considered in violation Facebook's 'Community Standards.' At the same time, speech promoting violence against the president and his supporters was labeled as merely 'political,' and was thus allowed to stay on the platform," the letter said.
He said that neither the company's programs nor its moderators are "neutral."
"Oversight is an essential part of Congress’ constitutional authority. Customarily, Congress is grateful to citizens who come forward with relevant information in good faith, as the aforementioned whistleblowers have done. As a member of this body, I question Mr. Zuckerberg’s veracity, and challenge his willingness to cooperate with our oversight authority, diverting congressional resources during time-sensitive investigations, and materially impeding our work. Such misrepresentations are not only unfair, they are potentially illegal and fraudulent," the letter said.
The previous video from Project Veritas:
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