New revelations about Facebook’s protection of the secret elite are supported by current and former Big Tech censorship experts
Facebook’s anti-competitive business practices confirmed by multiple sources going back to 2019
**On October 23rd, 2020, Ryan was in-studio with Tim Pool on his live show on TimCastIRL.
During the interview Ryan discusses the XCheck policy in detail. This is an unlisted video on TimCastIRL.
At 1:20:20 Ryan discusses XCheck
Here is a short clip of the most important part:
The details about XCheck were also revealed in Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship by Ryan Hartwig and Kent Heckenlively, J.D. The book launched on August 17th, 2021.
Original WSJ Article from 9/13/2021:
9/15/2021 Ryan Hartwig interview with Sputnik in Russia on this topic: https://sputniknews.com/20210915/more-equal-users-decisions-to-shield-celebrities-came-from-the-top-facebook-whistleblower-recalls-1089107818.html
9/20/2021 Ryan Hartwig interviewed by independent journalist Ivory Hecker on this topic: https://youtu.be/ObU37i1K_UY
9/14/2021
On June 6, 2019 Jack Posobiec on One America News interviewed Jason Fyk about new discoveries regarding Facebook’s AdShield protections https://youtu.be/crSdb6wOzg8 Fyk insinuated this was akin to criminal racketeering, where those that pay receive protections from uncouth behavior, and alerted us to this alarming business practice.
During that same time period, several things were happening at Facebook. A civic audit was being performed by the Covington Law Firm and former Senator Jon Kyl. https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/21/facebook-audit-results-rile-liberals-and-conservatives/ Also during 2019 is when Ryan Hartwig started filming with a hidden camera for Project Veritas, which we now know after he went public in June of 2020. https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistleblower-interference-on-a-global-level-in-elections/
The article Fox Business, written by Jeff Horwitz with The Wall Street Journal, states that many of the documents reviewed by WSJ were derived from former employees, at least one of which provided documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and to Congress.
To summarize, Jason Fyk first discovered this AdShield protection program, Ryan Hartwig separately discovered this and first exposed the XCheck term publicly in various interviews during late 2020/early 2021, and now the Wall Street Journal also has other whistleblowers coming forward supporting this information.
Ryan Hartwig, a former content moderator for Facebook, under contract with Cognizant, also blew the whistle and submitted documents and material to Congressman Matt Gaetz. Although he did not seek federal whistleblower protections, his communication with Gaetz led to a criminal referral to the DOJ for Mark Zuckerberg, because he testified that Facebook does not censor political speech. https://gaetz.house.gov/media/press-releases/congressman-matt-gaetz-files-criminal-referral-against-facebook-ceo-mark
Hartwig also aided in an FEC Complaint against Facebook for their deletion of political ads in the 2020 U.S. Senate race between John James and Gary Peters in Michigan. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/11/18/facebook-broke-the-law-by-censoring-anti-biden-ad-conservative-group-claims-n1158528
The examples given in the article show how Brazilian soccer star Neymar posted revenge porn but his account was not deleted because he was protected by XCheck. What is referred to in the article as “nonconsensual intimate imagery” is known as NCII and falls under a policy known by moderators like Hartwig as “Sexual Exploitation of Adults” or SEA. In his book, Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship, https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781510767942/behind-the-mask-of-facebook/ he describes how Facebook presumably decided to ignore their creepshot policy under the SEA policy, in the case of Kaitlin Bennett, the AR-15 girl who was purportedly filmed passed out with excrement coming out. This was made into a meme and everyone assumes it was Kaitlin, but you can’t see the face.
This just illustrates the hypocrisy and how an XCheck-protected user like Neymar can post revenge porn and get away with it, and yet the victims of the revenge porn or creepshots like Kaitlin Bennett don’t have the rules applied to them for equal protection.
Hartwig came across various examples of content that did have the XCheck tag, many often in the proactive queue for hate speech. The rules for these tags came explained with some of the posts he reviewed, and he filmed and documented the following which is on page 201 of his book Behind the Mask of Facebook:
“9_27_2019 Footage
Video 2, 6 mins 45 secs
This content is protected by a Hi Pri IP XCheck. Pass the content to the appropriate FTE queue for additional review.
This content is shielded by Fire Brigade and therefore cannot be actioned. If you believe this content violates policy, you can escalate to fire brigade for review.
This content is protected by a mid-pri XCheck tag, please follow the appropriate XCheck guidance.
This content is XCheck tagged with a MediaOps High-Pri Protection Level and therefore cannot be actioned. If you believe this content violates policy, you can escalate for review.
This content is protected by a media ops absolute protection XCheck tag and therefore cannot be actioned. If you believe this content violates policy, you can escalate for review.
This content belongs to a user or page identified by Media Operations as a business partner and therefore cannot be actioned. If you believe this content violates policy, you can escalate to Fire Brigade for review. If you’re unable to escalate the report in CRT, please create a task with all necessary info and assign to the Media Operations on-call found in the on-call tool.
This object has absolute protection against disabling actions”
Here we have different levels such as Hi Pri, mid-pri, MediaOps High-Pri, and business partner. We also see another category for “absolute protection”. This policy did exist and Hartwig confirms the existence of the XCheck tag. He came across BLM Activist Shaun King’s Instagram page which had XCheck protections.
- mid-pri XCheck tag
- Hi Pri IP XCheck
- MediaOps High-Pri Protection
- media ops absolute protection XCheck tag
- Media Operations (business partner) XCheck
- Absolute Protection
A separate label Hartwig witnessed was “shielded”. He is unsure of the relationship between “shielded” accounts and the Xcheck tag, but believes there is some correlation. Hartwig made an Excel spreadsheet to identify patterns and the main conclusion was that Dinesh D’Souza was one of the few influencers on the right or the left that did not have a “shield” protection. Breitbart News, Dennis Prager and others on the right did have the “shielded” protection but D’Souza did not have that similar protection.
Facebook responded to these claims and denied two systems of justice.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/facebook-denies-two-systems-of-justice-wall-street-journal
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone claims “There aren’t two systems of justice; it’s an attempted safeguard against mistakes.”
Yet this is hard to believe based on other discoveries made by Hartwig and documented in his book. Among those, Facebook willingly ignored their hate speech policy to allow Don Lemon to decry white males as “terror threats”, allowed hate speech against straight white males as “filth” for not supporting LGBT, and gave a “newsworthy exception” to allow Alyssa Milano to attack men for creating laws about abortion.
In addition to some of these examples shown by Project Veritas https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistleblower-interference-on-a-global-level-in-elections/ in the original release upon going public, Hartwig also exposed Facebook’s newsworthy exception to allow child pornography on a children’s music album, and their policy on immigration allowing users to openly communicate about the gaps in Border Patrol.
According to Hartwig, Facebook also modified their policy to allow more attacks on cops, specifically to allow them to be called pigs. Their only justification for this change was “That is because of how the term is used in the NA [North America] market”.
It seems that many mistakes are being made by Facebook, despite their safeguards, their XChecks and their shields. The most shocking part of this is how many times Facebook made “newsworthy exceptions” to protect specific individuals, in addition to the existing XCheck protections. It truly is a platform designed to protect the secret elite. This is indeed the free speech “apartheid” of the 21st century.
For media inquiries and interviews please email ryanhartwig@protonmail.com
