A Meta engineer claimed that Facebook has been ‘automatically demoting’ posts criticizing Kamala Harris in an undercover sting.
Senior software engineer Jeevan Gyawali was caught by a hidden camera while on a date discussing how Meta’s algorithms and content moderation practices reduce the visibility of certain political posts without notifying the users.
He provided an explanation to the unknown woman who sat at the other side of the table, saying if someone posts about Harris is ‘unfit to be president because she does not have a child’ that ‘kind of s*** is automatically demoted.’
Gyawali, 32, also said that Meta has the ability to influence the 2024 election, claiming CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to use that power to help the Democrats.
Sources confirmed to DailyMail.com Gyawali was shown in the video, but denied Meta has been demoting anti-Kamala posts.
The undercover sting was conducted by investigative journalist James O’Keefe and O’Keefe Media Group, which shared the hidden camera footage online.
Gyawali was said to have connected with the woman on the dating app Bumble and the two met in a restaurant. The location is unknown, but Gyawali lives in New York City.
Senior software engineer Jeevan Gyawali claimed Meta ‘automatically demotes’ anti-Kamala Harris posts and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is onboard with the practices
The video begins with the engineer explaining what kind of posts are automatically demoted.
‘Say your uncle in Ohio said something about Kamala Harris [being] unfit to be a president because she doesn’t have a child, that kind of s*** is automatically demoted,’ Gyawali said.
When his date asked about a scenario of right-wing groups setting up Instagram or Facebook groups to spread anti-Kamala content, Gyawali instantly replied ‘That’s all going to be demoted, 100 percent.’
Gyawali then admitted that when posts criticizing 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 shadowbanning users ‘for their anti-Kamala Harris posts’
‘So is that called shadowbanning,’ she asked to which Gyawali replied, ‘Shadowbanning yeah.’
‘So, they will see a dip in impressions and engagement, but they would not be officials warned for the reasons why?’ asked the journalist.
‘Correct,’ answered Gyawali.
According to Meta’s policy, when pages share content that has been marked ‘False’ by a fact-checker, ‘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 claim 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 defense system that Facebook has built now is … they have built these things called civic classifiers – a large model that has been trained on civic content, so anything that it detects to have a civic content, is like demoted, ‘he explains.
‘That means if anything is related to political content, it’s automatically not shown,’ he added when asked to define ‘civic classifiers.’
He continued to discuss a ‘SWAT team’ Meta set up in April, designed ‘to think about 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 SWAT team reference is.’
‘If it is referring to Meta’s Elections Operation Center, that, too, is something we have been public about for years,’ Stone continued.
The Elections Operation Center, set up in February, includes a team that tackles disinformation surrounding the election and shows ‘less political content of all kinds and viewpoints because users have told us they want to see less of it,’ Stone shared in an X post.
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 in agreement when questioned if Zuckerberg agrees with the idea.
The journalist then inquired if the CEO planned on helping the Democrats.
‘Yeah… 100 percent,’ Gyawali confidently replied.
Stone said: ‘As for the date night assertions about Mark Zuckerberg, sure can’t blame the guy for trying to impress his date by suggesting he knows what Mark thinks—probably not the first, or last, employee to try that one.’
In the video, the engineer claimed that Zuckerberg is using Meta’s ability to influence the election to help the Democrats
DailyMail.com has contacted Gyawali for comment. His LinkedIn and Facebook pages have since been taken removed.
The video comes just two months after Zuckerberg admitted Facebook censored ‘COVID misinformation’ at the demands of the Biden administration.
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee’s chairman Jim Jordan, published August 26, Zuckerberg confessed that the Biden administration was ‘wrong’ to demand Facebook censor what they deemed ‘COVID misinformation’ during the pandemic.
Zuckerberg promised that Meta fight back against any future attempts at censorship and admitted 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 didn’t agree.’
