Meta promotes former CIA agent to 'Head of Election Policies' after spearheading 2020 'misinformation' team

A former CIA agent that held a senior position on Facebook's "misinformation" team has been promoted by Mark Zuckerberg to be the head of "elections policies" at Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

Prior to the promotion, Aaron Berman, who served 17 years in the CIA, was in charge of a team that decided what would get classified as "misinformation" on Facebook during the 2020 presidential election, Breitbart News reports.



Berman joined Facebook in 2019 as a senior product policy manager for "misinformation" where he "built the misinformation policy team's US workforce and put policies into practice during critical events," according to the outlet.

According to Berman's page on LinkedIn, where he lists his past employment as "Senior Product Policy Manager, Misinformation," the CIA veteran says that one of his main duties on the job was to combat misinformation during "critical events." 

While Berman does not explain which critical events he was referring to, his timeline of employment coincides with Facebook's censorship during the 2020 presidential election when conservative politicians, publications, and commentators were either being banned from the platform or were given a "misinformation" label.

His LinkedIn page shows that he became Meta's Head of Elections Policies in May.

Berman's new position will consist of "Leading a team responsible for elections-related content policies worldwide. Overseeing policy development, advises senior executives, coordinates with teams on implementation via technical and human workflows, and representing Meta with external stakeholders."

He adds that he will also "Put policies into practice on key elections."

In September, it was revealed that the Biden administration held weekly censorship meetings with social media giants to suppress covid and vaccine "misinformation," which included Meta.

President Joe Biden claimed, in July 2021, that Facebook was "killing people." Meta reached out to the Surgeon General after that comment to "engage in damage control and appease the President's wrath," the NCLA states.
 

A Meta executive reported back to the government, saying "I wanted to make sure you saw the steps we took just this past week to adjust policies on what we are removing with respect to misinformation, as well as steps taken to further address the 'disinfo dozen': we removed 17 additional Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts tied to the disinfo dozen...."

According to emails, the information that was censored included vaccine refusal, and members of the military were targeted. "Vaccine refusal appeared in two main contexts in highly engaged posts - military refusals and consequences (often employment-related) for refusing the vaccine."

Berman, who served in the CIA from March 2002 to July 2019, was in charge of Facebook's misinformation team at the time of Biden's censorship requests.