PROJECT AMPLIFY: Facebook’s Plan To Censor Critics and Whistleblowers

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s ever-controversial chief executive, has authorized the use of a secret initiative code-named Project Amplify.

For years, we’ve been subjected to The Endless Facebook Apology, described by New York Times journalist Kara Swisher as the company’s “persistence of the tired old, so-so-sorry, we’ll-do-better excuses that its executives trot out when the company is called out for its destructive products.” Since the days of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2015, this strategy always ends the same: Facebook gets away with its “mistakes” and nothing about the site changes.

That was until recently. Thanks to whistleblower leaks published by The Wall Street Journal, company executives are currently in the war room making preparations to fight dirty. Although the project was originally hatched during a meeting in January, a report from The Times claims recent scandals surrounding Facebook have only escalated tensions.

In short, Project Amplify would turn the company’s most valuable commodity into their own personal defense grid: Facebook’s news feed. It’d work as a sleight-of-hand, selectively promoting pro-Facebook news — some of which written by the company itself—all the while independent stories would be ignored or demoted. Shrouded under the guise of a…