Eric Cochran, a software engineer and former Pinterest employee who leaked documents that show Pinterest is suppressing Christian, conservative, and pro-life content, has shed more light on big tech’s secretive censorship practices. In interviews with political commentator Tucker Carlson and Project Veritas, the organization that worked with Cochran to expose Pinterest’s censorship, he talked about the internal culture at Pinterest, his subsequent firing, and the way big tech companies work in concert to censor certain ideas.
Cochran initially spoke to Project Veritas anonymously while he was working at Pinterest and provided leaked documents that exposed Pinterest’s internal blacklists and blocklists. These blacklists and blocklists were being used to censor Christian, conservative, and pro-life content on Pinterest by blocking certain terms from auto-complete in search and preventing its users from linking to certain sites.
After Project Veritas released its first report on Pinterest’s censorship, Cochran was fired from Pinterest and has now decided to go public. In addition to being a former Pinterest employee, Cochran says that he speaks at tech conferences and has contributed to many open source code projects that are used in most of the major apps that people use on their phones each day.
Here’s a summary of what Cochran covered in his interviews with Carlson and Project Veritas:
On why he stepped forward
Cochran said he saw wrongdoing inside Pinterest and decided to take action. He added that there’s a huge bystander effect in Silicon Valley and that there’s an imminent threat to not just pro-life supporters and conservatives but free speech in general and the idea of people versus the establishment.
Cochran also said that he was inspired by an insider at Facebook who previously leaked documents to Project Veritas which suggested that the company was throttling live videos on conservative pages:
“That’s when I realized that there are so many people in big tech companies that see this going on all the time and then don’t say anything.”
On the impact of stepping forward
Cochran believes that his actions will ultimately be the spark that abolishes abortion because they’re helping to expose what’s really going on inside big tech companies:
“This is the watershed moment. This is the spark for the pro-life movement. Pro-lifers within these tech companies, come to Project Veritas, expose what’s really going on in big tech.”
On big tech’s internal censorship practices
Cochran said that practices such as putting the phrase “Christian Easter” on a “sensitive terms list” is normal inside Silicon Valley. He added that the tech establishment uses a type of “high school bully fear” to control and intimidate people inside these “dark censorship bureaus.”
Cochran also believes that the abortion lobby is working in concert with big tech and the legacy media to censor pro-life ideas:
“They are 100% in this to censor pro-life ideas, and people, and content, and arguments.”
Cochran added that big tech is a “hive mind” with all the content and safety teams from different companies working with each other. He believes that Pinterest’s actions will cause a ripple effect and other big tech companies will now start to censor pro-life content.
On getting fired from Pinterest
Cochran said that he came into work on the day that Project Veritas released its report and had breakfast as normal. However, when he sat down at his desk, he noticed that he’d been locked out of some accounts and realized that was probably the end of his work at Pinterest. A few employees then told Cochran in person that they couldn’t reach him using Slack, an internal business collaboration tool, because his account had been deactivated. He was then eventually approached by security who took his badge and laptop and then escorted him out of the building.
Cochran added that he was surprised about the firing but he knew it was a possibility and was mentally prepared:
“I knew that at any time they were going to take action against a whistleblower. They didn’t want this to be known to anybody and they were going to retaliate in some fashion.”
On encouraging other big tech insiders to come forward
Cochran encouraged other big tech insiders to ignore the intimidation of the tech establishment and said that by coming forward, they’ll be making all the difference for the world and humanity because they’ll be highlighting what’s really going on inside these big tech companies:
“It’s all worth it. When all the comforts of life fade, this is going to be what matters.”
He also encouraged them to focus on the impact they can make on humanity and the positive impact they can make in the world:
“This sparks so many more people and it awakens so many more people to what’s going on in tech.”
Cochran added that the hardest part is to take the first step but emphasized that people are willing to support insiders who come forward:
“People have your back. You have support. They, the tech companies, can’t fight us all.”
Cochran’s insights seem to have been echoed through many of the stories we’ve seen in 2019 with insiders in these big tech companies coming forward to provide:
- The previous Project Veritas Facebook leaks which suggest Facebook is suppressing conservative content
- Multiple leaks showing that Facebook has an internal “hate agents” list that it uses to keep tabs on people and potentially remove them from the platform
- Leaks showing that Google has an internal bias against conservatives
These leaks are exposing big tech’s internal censorship practices to the public and holding them accountable. The tech giants also appear to be scared of this increase in leaks and have taken a number of retaliatory actions.
Google recently fired a former staff member who had leaked internal documents. Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube also censored Project Veritas and Live Action, a pro-life advocacy group featured in the leaked Pinterest documents, after Project Veritas released its report exposing Pinterest’s censorship.
