When Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) promised that more Facebook Files were coming after dropping the first collection, he immediately delivered on that promise. The House Judiciary Committee Chair released part two of documents showcasing the current administration pressuring the social media titan to censor content, with Mark Zuckerberg and Co. bowing to the White House’s demands. What did Rep. Jordan reveal in the latest batch of the Facebook Files?
The Facebook Files – Part Two
In the summer of 2021, President Joe Biden and his team initiated a nationwide campaign to encourage Americans to get the COVID vaccine. Newly subpoenaed documents published by Rep. Jordan on July 28 revealed that a component of this White House initiative was “to get Facebook to more aggressively police vaccine-related content, including true information.” US officials asserted that many Americans were reluctant to receive the jab because of the content they consumed on Facebook. Although employees scoffed at the notion, the blowback from the administration forced the company to take another look at its COVID-19 content policies, bringing in then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg, the company’s head of Global Affairs.
As in the first part of the Facebook Files, the administration once again demanded Facebook censor “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe.” But the White House, with support from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, wanted the website to “remove true information about side effects.” Sandberg was keen on showing the Biden administration that Facebook was responsive to the White House’s concerns, going as far as proposing “blackholing” particular domains. “My sense is that our current course—in effect explaining ourselves more fully, but not shifting on where we draw the lines…is a recipe for protracted and increasing acrimony with the [White House],” Clegg wrote in an email to his colleagues.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Biden accused Facebook and its industry rivals of “killing people” due to misinformation. Then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki urged Facebook to take “additional steps,” adding that the White House was in regular contact with the social media outlet to flag so-called problematic posts. Despite the company’s initial pushback heading into the summer, Facebook essentially conceded defeat and relented to the administration by agreeing “to change the company’s content moderation policies” in August 2021 amid the continued pressure.
“These subpoenaed documents continue to reveal the Biden administration’s efforts to censor speech,” Rep. Jordan tweeted. “To be continued…”
As Liberty Nation reported, part one of the Facebook Files highlighted the White House being perturbed over a meme that it thought threatened the administration’s efforts to elicit confidence in the jab. If the first two document dumps spotlighted all the president’s men becoming outraged over pandemic-era humor, the follow-up threads should be compelling entertainment for the masses.
Mark Zuckerberg: It’s True
In June, Meta CEO Zuckerberg sat down for a podcast with popular interviewer Lex Fridman, discussing how the social media platform handled the coronavirus pandemic. He confirmed that Facebook was repeatedly asked by the “establishment” to censor coronavirus-related posts that were labeled as misinformation, despite this information later turning out to be “debatable or true.”
Zuckerberg admitted that it can be “really tricky” when the content is false, but “may not be harmful, so it’s like, all right, are you going to censor someone for just being wrong, if there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing?” “Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts,” Zuckerberg told Fridman.
In a 2021 interview with CBS anchor Gayle King, Zuckerberg reported that the social network removed about 18 million posts containing COVID-related misinformation.
Censorship
It is often asked: What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? Answer: Six months. Indeed, a growing list of conspiracy theories has turned out to be accurate. But rather than accept and acknowledge these developments, governments will go as far as to censor information they disagree with. Byron York, a chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner and contributor to Fox News, reported that Biden officials pressured Facebook to “censor posts suggesting virus originated in lab.” Two years later, the Department of Energy now believes the lab leak theory to be accurate. What else will Rep. Jordan reveal? Stay tuned.
