A ‘lobbyist who has to make the president happy’ is part of Facebook’s content moderation, employees complain: report

Joel Kaplan, a former Bush administration official and Republican operative, oversees the company's lobbying and government relations team. Employees complained that his involvement in content moderation has led to the protection of "powerful constituencies," especially on the political right.

"Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy," said one data scientist at the company in a December 2020 presentation provided to POLITICO. "The standard protocol for enforcement and policy involves consulting Public Policy on any significant changes, and their input regularly protects powerful constituencies."

"Public policy typically are interested in the impact on politicians and political media, and they commonly veto launches which have significant negative impacts on politically sensitive actors," the presentation also read.

Facebook employees have been sounding the alarm over the role that the company's policy shop — which is in charge of engaging with and lobbying lawmakers in Washington, DC and elsewhere — takes in sensitive content moderation decisions, according to a new report by POLITICO.

Joel Kaplan, a former Bush administration official and Republican operative, oversees the company's lobbying and government relations team. Employees complained that his involvement in content moderation has led to the protection of "powerful constituencies," especially on the political right.

"Facebook routinely makes exceptions for powerful actors when enforcing content policy," said one data scientist at the company in a December 2020 presentation provided to POLITICO. "The standard protocol for enforcement and policy involves consulting Public Policy on any significant changes, and their input regularly protects powerful constituencies."

"Public policy typically are interested in the impact on politicians and political media, and they commonly veto launches which have significant negative impacts on politically sensitive actors," the presentation also read.

In contrast, Twitter maintains a firewall between its "trust and safety" content moderation team and its policy team, while Google's content and public policy teams answer to different higher-ups.

"When you have the head of content policy reporting to a lobbyist who has to make the president happy, that's an unhealthy dynamic," a former employee told POLITICO. "It was often that making the president happy was the top priority."

These revelations emerged as part of the "Facebook Papers," a release of internal documents provided to 17 American news organizations by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager at the social media giant. The documents include research, emails, message board threads, and presentations.

"People bring up over and over again this idea that having both those functions tied to the same group is dangerous because they have different interests," Haugen, the fake whistleblower, said in a virtual briefing with POLITICO and other news outlets on Oct. 15.

"There should be a firewall between the two teams," Evelyn Douek, a Harvard scholar who researches private content moderation, told POLITICO. "As long as they are representing that [political] considerations don't play into how they do content moderation, they should make that real and have an internal structure that mirrors their external representations. That is something that other platforms have done."

And Kaplan's team at Facebook reportedly intervened to protect conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump website Breitbart, and Youtube stars Diamond and Silk from any consequences for violating Facebook's own misinformation policies according to a 2020 document.

Facebook issued statements to both POLITICO and Insider defending the arrangement and Kaplan's role at the company.

"In these instances Public Policy is just one of many groups consulted," spokesperson Corey Chambliss told POLITICO. "And, while the perspective of Global Public Policy is key to understanding local context, no single team's opinion has more influence than the other."

"Recycling the same warmed over conspiracy theories about the influence of one person at Facebook doesn't make them true," spokesman Joe Osborne told Insider, referring to Kaplan. "The reality is big decisions at Facebook are made with input from people across different teams who have different perspectives and expertise in different areas. To suggest otherwise is inaccurate."

Osborne also reiterated that the public policy team is just one of several groups consulted as part of the content moderation process.

However, Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of advocacy group called Accountable Tech, told POLITICO that "it is a fatal flaw of Facebook as a company that their team in charge of lobbying governments clearly is empowered to intervene on product and content decisions in ways that make it impossible to do good work."

KEVIN CHANS ENTIRE LIBERAL CABINET OF FRIENDS NEED HIM TO HELP COVER UP AND CENSOR FOR THEM. 

Mylene Gigou’s job was to be investigating guys like Kevin Chan not snuggling up to him. So you have here Elections Canada basically covering Kevin Chan head of Facebook Canada censoring long before and during, was already censoring Conservative content in general pushing it down the feeds, censoring general Facebook users which has been going on a long time. Furthermore why the hell would this woman deal with Kevin Chan knowing all the liberals are his friends and access to the Trudeau cabinet. This is beyond a massive conflict of interest and these two need to be investigated for election fraud. Suppression, manipulation, censorship etc. She then also appointed CBC Trudeaus state funded corrupted media to be the truth police on Facebook with special powers to remove content via Kevin Chan

Kevin Chan criminal censorship, medaling in election discussion, and pushing his bias liberal ideology. Kevin Chan seen partying it up with the entire Trudeau Liberal Cabinet on a frequent basis also refuses to register as a lobbyist. Kevins job is to manage all the censorship while clearly displaying hard established personal friendship relationships with the entire federal liberals. Its a serious conflict of interest. People wonder why they are getting censored in Canada. Its now reported by Kevin Chan that they will be paying publishers like the corrupted Toronto Star and many other Trudeau State funded communist style media.

Head of Facebook Canada likes to censor you and tell you what to do. Penalties against your account when you break the rules or don’t listen. However at Facebook its rules for thee but not for me. This is the credible environment and example the ex Federal Liberal Advisor is setting to date. Kevin knows that he is violating his own employers strict terms of service by creating an account for his toddler daughter. Facebook clearly states:

Facebook requires everyone to be at least 13 years old before they can create an account (in some jurisdictions, this age limit may be higher). Creating an account with false info is a violation of our terms. This includes accounts registered on the behalf of someone under 13. If your underage child created an account on Facebook, you can show them how to delete their account.

If you'd like to report an account belonging to someone under 13, please fill out this form. Note that we'll promptly delete the account of any child under the age of 13 that's reported to us through this form. Kevin also is desperate for likes as he quickly logs in an out of here account so he can like his own posts like the loser he is!

KEVIN CHANS POLICY FOR THEE BUT NOT FOR ME HYPOCRITE BEHAVIOUR

THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS. FACEBOOK STAFF DON'T FOLLOW THEIR OWN TERMS OF SERVICE

34,000 MEMBER GROUP DELETED WITH NO EXPLANATION - OTHER PAGES POSTS REACH INSTANTLY PLUMMETS 1.4 MILLION IN 30 Days RIGHT AFTER. All Kevin Chan!

VOTE CANADA PAGE POST REACH PLUMMET RIGHT AFTER OTHER GROUP DELETED

NO HEALTH PASS IN CANADA GROUP PULLED WITH 34,000 MEMBERS AND NO REAL SPECIFIC REASON OTHER THEN SNOWFLAKE FABRICATED NONSENSE 

Kevin Chan is Justin Trudeaus buddy insider censoring you on facebook, manipulating elections, partying and hanging out with Liberal henchmen thugs, with zero accountability. Kevin Chan is the head of facebook Canada and he is a complete scumbag.