Meta, private company or new branch of the American government? Many former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents are hired by Facebook to decide what content will be deemed undesirable or abusive by Facebook. platform. So much so that the close relations between the famous social network and the American government are beginning to worry.
A total of 40,000 employees of the web giant, which currently owns Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, among others, would be in charge of moderating Facebook content, holding absolute power over public information. “They are the ones who make the decisions around what content will be allowed, promoted or removed. These decisions affect all the news and information that billions of users receive and see every day.”, explains the journalist Alan MacLeod in an investigation published on the site of Mint Press News.
Huge power of influence
But although Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook in 2004 and CEO of the Meta group, speaks of the social network as a true example of traditional American freedom of expression, one can doubt the veracity of this statement in view of the many ex-members of the US government employed to provide moderation on the platform. “The people responsible for these algorithms wield far more power and influence in the public sphere than the editors of the biggest news outlets”adds the journalist.
“The Facebook Safety Advisory Board brings together leading international organizations specializing in internet safety”, can we read on Facebook, in the section “About our rules”, tab “Policy and reporting”. “Facebook consults with these organizations on issues related to online safety. We leverage the expertise, insights and research of committee members to guide our approach to safety”.
Yet, according to descriptions of the resumes of Facebook’s trust and safety policy officers, Meta’s workforce is ultimately much more made up of former US government recruits than the social network suggests. Whether it’s the CIA, the FBI or the DOD, the American Department of Defense, “for some, the line can be very thin between where US national security ends and where Facebook begins”warns MacLeod.
Managers with loaded profiles
The investigation then cites several former government employees and ex-CIA agents, whose job now consists of enforcing Facebook’s security rules. Among them, Deborah Berman and Cameron Harris, both former intelligence analysts for the CIA for several years, or Bryan Weisbard, a former CIA intelligence officer from 2006 to 2010 before becoming a diplomat. When he was employed by the CIA, he led “global counter-terrorism and digital cybersecurity investigation teams” and was thus charged “to identify disinformation propaganda on online social networks and covert influence campaigns”.
That’s not all. Emily Vacher, 10 years of experience as a supervisory special agent at the FBI, is now director of trust and safety rules for the Facebook community. Mike Bradow, meanwhile, head of misinformation policy at Facebook since 2020, worked for USAID, the United States government agency responsible for economic development and humanitarian assistance around the world. According to MacLeod, “USAID is a US government-funded influence organization that has managed several overseas regime change operations, including in Venezuela in 2002, Cuba in 2021, and ongoing attempts in Nicaragua”. Finally, Neil Potts, vice president of trust and safety at Facebook, is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and Joey Chan, trust and safety program manager at Meta, said. worked as a commander in the U.S. Army until 2021, where he oversaw over 100 soldiers in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Troubling questions about the company’s impartiality and its proximity to government power”
Is it really appropriate to entrust control of our news feeds to former representatives of US government agencies? For MacLeod, the answer is clear: Meta Group’s proximity to the United States government sends shivers down the spine. “Hiring so many former state officials to run Facebook’s most politically sensitive operations raises troubling questions about the company’s impartiality and proximity to government power”underlines the journalist.
On its site, Facebook adds: “The Security Advisory Board is not mandated to review topics or topics that are not security related (algorithms, brand trust, or artificial intelligence, for example), unless these topics intersect with security”.
Simply put, when it comes to security, America’s notorious intelligence agency could dictate to the billions of users of the world’s most important news platform what they can and cannot see online. , all without public oversight. “This arrangement is the best of both worlds for Washington, which can wield significant influence over global news and information flows, but retains plausible deniability.”concludes Alan MacLeod.
This is not the first time that the close relations between the media and American government agencies have been pointed out. Started in the late 1940s and made public some thirty years later, Operation Mockingbird, a CIA project intended to influence the American media, caused a stir in 1977 when the journalist from Washington Post Carl Bernstein unveiled in the Rolling Stone that about 400 journalists were working in conjunction with the CIA. “The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media”notes the American monthly Monthly Review in relation to the current controversy related to Facebook’s security rules.