Facebook’s moderation, particularly ahead of the 2020 election, invited a lot of scrutiny from both sides of the US political divide: conservatives who say they are disproportionately silenced, and leftists who insist that Facebook needs even more censorship.
Conservatives are now noticing that some of the top positions in Facebook’s Policy and Communications team appear to be chock-full of former Democratic Party staffers.
And when conservative activists like Kyle Kashuv took a closer look at some of those in key positions on that team, what they found suggests that any bias might not be a coincidence.
Kashuv shared a screenshot combining four Twitter profiles belonging to Liz Bourgeois, Riki Parikh, Amber Moon, and Monique Dorsainvil, along with a comment, “Nothing to see here…”
In other words, there’s quite a bit to see. Liz Bourgeois links to her former employers: the Democratic National Committee, and high ranking Democratic official Nancy Pelosi.
Riki Parikh, meanwhile, who works as communications lead for the company’s head of global affairs, used to be an aide to a slew of Democratic senators, past – like Mike Johnston, and present, like Michael Bennet, Mark Warner, John Wright Hickenlooper. And last but not least, to Joe Biden himself.
Amber Moon was in the past professionally affiliated with former Democratic Senators Gary Peters and Kay Hagan. Moon was also a staffer on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic Party’s top fundraising committee.
Then there’s Monique Dorsainvil, who was the deputy chief of staff and senior advisor in the Obama administration for the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.
Her Twitter profile also links to those of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation.
Facebook came under intense pressure after the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump, when political and media circles suddenly started criticizing every aspect of its business (but least of all the most important one – the unbridled private data collection that fuels its ad business).
With this look into those now playing some of the key roles on the Policy and Communications team, it’s easy to speculate that the purpose of the criticism was to steer Facebook, a powerful public square, to where it would in the future “help elect” somebody more to the taste of the company’s fiercest post-2016 detractors.
Likewise, it was recently reported that Biden is then collecting Big Tech employees to form part of his transition team.
