Facebook Now Attempting to Censor ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ According to Leaked Documents

Whistleblowers from Facebook are alleging that the tech giant is pushing an effort to censor content expressing vaccine hesitancy on its platform.

New reporting from Project Veritas shows leaked internal memo explaining "Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion" which shows the "goal" is to "drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy."

Another leaked document addressed "Borderline Vaccine (BV) Framework" that delves into how to classify such content with another expressed "goal" of to "identify and tier the categories of non-violating content that could discourage vaccination in certain contexts, thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal," adding "We have tiered these by potential harm and how much context is required in order to evaluate harm."

"Facebook uses classifiers in their algorithms to determine certain content… they call it ‘vaccine hesitancy.' And without the user's knowledge, they assign a score to these comments that's called the ‘VH Score,' the ‘Vaccine Hesitancy Score,’" one Facebook "insider" told Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe. "And then based on that score will demote or leave the comment alone depending on the content within the comment."

The insider, who is described by O'Keefe as a "data center technician" for Facebook, revealed that the tech giant was running a "test" on 1.5% of its 3.8 billion users with the focus on the comments sections on "authoritative health pages."  

"They're trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it," the insider told O'Keefe.

The vaccine hesitancy ratings are divided into tiers zero, one and two, according to the leaked documents. Comments in tier zero are an explicit violation of Facebook policy while those in tier one are counted as “Alarmism & Criticism,” according to the documents obtained by Project Veritas.

Tier two comments are “Indirect Vaccine Discouragement,” which include “shocking stories” that may deter others from taking the vaccine — even if they’re true, the documents show.

The algorithm would then assign comments in such tiers a “vaccine hesitancy” or a “VH Score,” the documents said, and could be hidden from the “most relevant” comments section or even removed altogether.

“Based on that VH score, we will demote or leave the comment alone depending on the content within the comment,” an anonymous whistleblower told James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.

“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page, before you even see it,” a whistleblower added.

One of the leaked documents is titled “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” Its executive summary states the goal is to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy (VH) in comments.”

The 15-page document adds that “reducing the visibility of these comments represents another significant opportunity for us to remove barriers to vaccination that users on the platform may potentially encounter.”

The document added that the algorithm was the only tool Facebook had at the time to address “the high prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in Health comments,” and that a better “detection” tool would be implemented when available.