A Facebook executive told the White House that the social media platform not only suppressed “misinformation” but also took action against the “virality” of “often true” content on the COVID-19 vaccines.
The information was in an email obtained through the Missouri court case Missouri vs. Biden, which alleges top Biden administration officials “colluded with Big Tech social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech under the First Amendment.”
Some of the email exhibits in the lawsuit are jaw-dropping.
Facebook assures [White House Digital Director Robert] Flaherty that “in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation,” including “often-true content”
The White House asks Twitter to censor Robert Kennedy, Jr., a known critic of the White House’s COVID-19 narrative
The White House directs Facebook to shut down conservative voices Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren
White House Digital Director Flaherty scolds Facebook, saying that he “really couldn’t care less about products unless they’re having measureable impact” at suppressing speech
Flaherty informs Facebook that “misinformation around the vaccine” is “a concern shared at the highest (and I mean highest) level of the WH”
“I want to protect Missourians and the freedoms they enjoy, which is why as attorney general, I will always defend the Constitution,” Bailey told The Daily Signal in an email Thursday. “This case is about the Biden administration’s blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its collusion with Big Tech social media companies to suppress speech it disagrees with.”
In this email to the White House, the Facebook representative admitted to preventing exposure of content that doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies—content that isn’t “actionable.” The staffer also suggested that the White House had asked Facebook to take these measures.
In an April 22, 2021, email, Flaherty told Google staff that the White House remains “concerned that Youtube [sic] is ‘funneling’ people into hesitance and intensifying people’s hesitancy. We certainly recognize that removing content that is unfavorable to the cause of increasing vaccine adoption is not a realistic—or even good—solution.”
The White House’s digital strategy chief added that combating vaccine hesitancy “is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH [White House],” an apparent reference to the president himself.
What’s so very disheartening — and scary — is the marrying of political power with the massive communications power of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies. The United States has never seen anything like it. Americans are being spoon-fed information from the government on a vital public health issue while they are being robbed of the ability to freely investigate the issue on their own.
Joseph Stalin would’ve been proud.
Big Tech’s censorship has not abated, either. In December, YouTube removed a video presentation featuring two doctors and a Heritage Foundation expert, claiming the video violated its misinformation policy on COVID-19 vaccines. YouTube didn’t identify which of the four speakers supposedly had violated the policy.
Roger Severino, former director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services and currently vice president for domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, called the move “Kafkaesque.” (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)
“Kafkaesque” describes perfectly. what Facebook did in this case and thousands of others. In Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the protagonist is being prosecuted by faceless bureaucrats without being told what he did wrong. What makes the story so compelling is that the reader is also in the dark about the nature of the offense.
“I wish I knew exactly what triggered YouTube’s ire, but they remain imperiously vague,” Severino told The Daily Signal. “It is Kafkaesque to be placed in YouTube jail and not be told what the alleged crime was or even who committed it.”
In Joe Biden’s America, it’s enough that you’re intimidated into toeing the line and obeying the government.
Reporting from PJ Media.
