Facebook Admits Censoring Posts at Government Request

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, called off a markup session to formally file contempt of Congress charges against Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, as part of the investigation into the company’s collusion with government censorship.

Jordan released  the “Facebook Files” on Thursday, detailing how the Biden White House forced Facebook to curb Americans' First Amendment free speech rights on its platform. Mr. Jordan announced “never-before-released” internal documents.

These contain an email, dated April 2021, from a Facebook employee confirming the Biden government’s intervention against free speech. “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press to remove more Covid-19 vaccine discouraging content,” an anonymous employee told Zuckerberg and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Dan Schneider, Vice-President of Media Research Center, responded to the publication: “Biden’s number one tactic for re-election is silencing conservatives, and he is using every tool, legal and illegal, at his disposal to keep the public ignorant of his disastrous performance.” 

“We should not be shocked to see how he and his team coerced Big Tech to do their illegal bidding, but it is no surprise at all for those who are following this story.” Jordan also criticized the Biden administration in an interview on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Thursday.

In another email, Meta Global Affairs president Nick Clegg questioned former White House senior advisor Andy Slavitt, who said he was “outraged” that Facebook did not comply with its censorship demand.

The rest is damning. “What did Biden’s White House want removed?” Jordan asked. “A meme. That’s right, even memes were not spared by the Biden White House’s censorship efforts.” The meme in question was joking about the potential COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

White House censorship demands were so draconian that they alarmed Meta. According to Jordan, “When Clegg countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the U.S., Slavitt disregarded the warning and the First Amendment.”

A journalist interviewed White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: “How much is the White House now working with social media companies to remove concerned posts or things they don’t want?” asked Edward Lawrence, Fox’s White House correspondent.

Jean-Pierre dodged the question, saying: “As I have repeated many times from here, we have promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety and security in the face of challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections.”