By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Saturday, May 29, 2021

A Facebook whistleblower who leaked documents to Project Veritas exposing the tech giant’s policy on suppressing “vaccine hesitancy” has been fired.

In a video posted Friday, Facebook data center technician Morgan Kahmann was shown on a Zoom call with an executive telling him that his employment had been terminated when Project Veritas president James O’Keefe crashed the meeting.

“I have to ask you, why are you taking action against Morgan for publicizing these vaccine documents?” asked Mr. O’Keefe, after which the executive ended the call, saying it was private.

Mr. Kahmann was suspended Thursday after revealing he was the previously anonymous “insider” who turned over internal company documents outlining Facebook’s strategy for demoting posts that express concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines, even if the comments are accurate.

He said he was unsurprised by the firing. “I feel like I knew what was going to happen because they didn’t want this information to get out,” Mr. Kahmann said.

Facebook said in response to the Project Veritas video posted Monday by saying that the policy had been posted publicly.

“We proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Washington Times.

Mr. Kahmann was one of two Facebook “insiders” who detailed the tech platform’s program to “[d]rastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy,” saying the company used algorithms to suppress the limit the reach of posts that oppose vaccines or even describe the user’s side effects.

Mr. Kahmann said he asked the Facebook executive why he was being fired “effective immediately” without a company investigation.

“I said, so what’s actually going on here? We never had the investigatory meeting. No one ever told me what this is over, what it’s about, or anything,” said Mr. Kahmann on the video. “And they said, oh basically this is about you—they started talking about, you violated company policy.”

 

SEE ALSO: Project Veritas exposes how Facebook shuts down COVID-19 ‘vaccine hesitancy’

 

Mr. Kahmann, who appeared Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” set up a GiveSendGo crowdfunding page that had raised as of Saturday more than $373,000 toward its $500,000 goal.

“Due to my willingness to expose the truth about Facebook’s secret censorship of vaccine concerns, I have been let go from my job,” says the page. “I have a wife who is 7 months pregnant and a son who is 2 years old—we would appreciate any support you are able to offer at this time.”

Mr. O’Keefe said the former Facebook tech had raised more via crowdfunding than any other whistleblower in Project Veritas history.

In March, Facebook said it would seek to reduce “vaccine misinformation” on its platform and help connect people to vaccinations through its apps as part of a partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital.

“Building on our goal to promote authoritative information about COVID-19 vaccines, we have implemented several temporary measures to further limit the spread of potentially harmful COVID-19 and vaccine information during the pandemic,” said the company in a March 15 post.

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.

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