Reporter: Facebook using ex-CIA to decide misinformation policy is ‘very, very worrying’

An investigative reporter for MintPress News on Monday said it was “very worrying” that Facebook is employing former CIA agents to moderate misinformation policies on the social media platform.

Alan MacLeod, who published a piece last week about ex-CIA agents working at Facebook, told Hill.TV the decision to employ them to moderate content was worrying because the CIA has a “long history of infiltrating media organizations.”

“The CIA has a terrible track record from everything from organizing coups to running black sites all over the world to even just planting a load of false information into the public domain to suit their own agenda,” MacLeod said. “We are now relying on these people to tell us what’s fact and fiction and to sort truth and fiction from falsehood online.”

Facebook has struggled to contain misinformation for years. The social media company employs third party fact-checking organizations to reduce the spread of false and harmful content.

MacLeod, who wrote that Facebook has employed dozens of former CIA agents primarily to work in the fields of security or content moderation, told Hill.TV that a limited amount of people are experts in cybersecurity, which would explain why Facebook is looking toward the CIA.

But the reporter said Americans are “not secure from what our own government is doing” the more control that current and former officials have over technology.

“It might be great to [have] security from Chinese hackers or Iranian bloggers,” MacLeod said, “but it’s not security from the enormous agencies in Washington, who of course are trying to influence the internet as well.”