The Biden administration put immense pressure on Facebook to remove COVID content they didn’t like, including claims that COVID is man-made.
Here’s more via the New York Post:
Facebook removed content related to COVID-19 under pressure from the White House, including posts claiming the virus was man-made, according to internal company communications leaked to The Wall Street Journal.
“Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing — rather than demoting/labeling — claims that Covid is man made,” Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, asked in a July 2021 email to colleagues.
According to the outlet, a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy responded: “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” referencing the Biden administration.
“We shouldn’t have done it,” the VP added.
The emails were exchanged around August 2021 — three months after Facebook reversed its ban on posts asserting COVID-19 was man-made.
Another email viewed by The Journal was circulated the month prior, after Biden accused platforms like Facebook of “killing people” by allowing so-called “misinformation” to propagate unchecked.
In other words the Biden administration was censoring people, which is why earlier this month a federal judge banned the administration from contacting social media companies for the purpose of censoring people.
Yesterday Jim Jordan posted a long Twitter thread that reveals evidence the Judiciary Committee has received showing that the Biden White House put “unconstitutional pressure” on social media companies to censor posts and change their policies. I won’t post the entire thread but here’s a few highlights:
Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House” to remove posts. pic.twitter.com/iDRV3Kk2oO
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
In another April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, informed his team at Facebook that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden, was “outraged . . . that [Facebook] did not remove” a particular post. pic.twitter.com/5muflAQjcx
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
What did the Biden White House want removed?
A meme.
That’s right, even memes weren’t spared from the Biden White House’s censorship efforts. pic.twitter.com/6BhDxTHsUi
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
You can check out Jordan’s entire thread by clicking any of the tweets above.