If the Trump years taught conservatives anything, it was to beware of so-called whistleblowers, because they always seem to have a liberal agenda motivating them.
Such appears to be the case with the “Facebook whistleblower,” Frances Haugen, who testified before the Senate’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security on Tuesday to great fanfare.
The top headline of the whole thing was that she was alarmed about the harmful effect of Facebook and Instagram on children, and she may well be, but if you dig a little deeper and listen closely, suppressing political speech is a lot of what she’s about.
It was right in her opening statement, when Haugen claimed that Facebook’s products “stoke division and weaken our democracy.”
The Federalist reported that she joined Facebook in 2019 “on the condition of being tasked with censoring ‘misinformation,’” and worked on a 200-member civic integrity unit, where she continued until after the 2020 election.
Haugen’s team “was tasked with countering so-called misinformation (read: throttling politically disfavored content)” about the election, according to The Federalist.
Does the term “misinformation” in the fall of 2020 ring a bell?
What if I add Hunter Biden as a clue?
That’s right, that laptop with the emails showing Hunter’s nefarious dealings with China and at least one proposed deal that would have cut in the “big man” — reportedly Joe Biden.
In October, Facebook and Twitter censored the bombshell story first broke by the New York Post, calling it misinformation.
“Facebook policy comms director Andy Stone on Twitter and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in congressional testimony admitted to the company suppressing the bombshell report,” The Federalist reported.
Stone tweeted his views in October 2020.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
Haugen admitted in a back-and-forth with Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota that she wishes Facebook had kept the same “safeguards” in place regarding political speech after the election as it had in the lead-up to it.
“Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew [the engagements] were dangerous,” Haugen said. “And because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults.”
Frances Haugen: "Facebook changed those safety defaults in the run-up to the election because they knew they were dangerous. And, because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults." pic.twitter.com/P5GEIFrxOh
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 5, 2021
FEC records show that Haugen is a liberal, so that is no doubt the speech she does not find dangerous.
She contributed multiple times during the 2020 election cycle and since to left-wing groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and ActBlue, which helps Democratic candidates and progressive groups raise money.
“In a previous role at Pinterest, Frances Haugen was behind a ‘recent change to give users the option to filter searches to specific skin tones,’” The Daily Wire reported.
And while employed at Gigster, she gave a presentation on how “if we don’t build with an eye towards inclusion, we can end up enshrining bias.”
Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned Republican lawmakers on Tuesday that the push to regulate Facebook is looking like a trap.
“God help any Republican who would assist” Democrats in empowering social media companies to clamp down conservatives, she said on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“The fact is Republicans may be walking straight into a trap,” the Fox host explained. “The left’s real beef with Facebook has nothing to do with the children. The kids are on TikTok, aren’t they? The left doesn’t like Facebook because Facebook has refused to suppress all conservative speech. That’s it.”
“The left has decided to drive conservatives off of the internet, and they’re afraid Facebook won’t be sufficiently loyal to their plans.”
Ingraham argued the suppression of speech will all be done in the name of “preventing domestic terrorism” or maintaining community peace in a way akin to something communist China would do.
The left’s real goal, she argued, is a “land where we’re silenced and theirs are the only voices heard.”
Ingraham makes an astute observation.
Haugen is no whistleblower; she’s clearly a Democratic operative promoting an anti-free speech agenda, which should be rejected.