Biden Administration Officials Repeatedly Demanded Facebook Censor Users For COVID Memes
The Biden administration's censorship efforts were even more extensive and aggressive than previously reported.
Last fall, the Twitter files and other documents revealed alleged coordination between the Biden administration and tech companies.
READ: COURT ORDERS BIDEN ADMIN TO SHOW RECORDS OVER ALLEGED CENSORSHIP COORDINATION WITH BIG TECH
Now the release of new internal emails has revealed much more than coordination with tech companies; it's revealed direct and repeated efforts by Biden officials to coerce Facebook to remove posts they didn't like.
Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government posted new internal Facebook emails on Twitter Thursday. The emails from April 2021 show a Facebook employee telling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg that the company was facing "continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House" to take down posts they didn't approve of.
Another email showed that former Biden advisor Andy Slavitt, one of the "experts" who repeatedly spread COVID misinformation, was "outraged" that Facebook hadn't yet removed a post.
The post, according to Jordan, was a meme about COVID vaccines.
Sounds about right.
WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 05: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks during an event on the South Lawn of the White House August 5, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Biden Officials Purposefully Disregarded First Amendment
Facebook’s president for global affairs Nick Clegg reportedly told Slavitt that “removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US."
Slavitt's response was to disregard free expression, demanding they censor it because it damaged the Biden administration's vaccine outreach efforts.
Facebook was so concerned about retaliation from the government that Clegg warned other executives to "regroup."
“Given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea if we could regroup and take stock of where we are in our relations with the , and our internal methods too," he wrote.
Pressure from Biden administration officials got so intense throughout the summer that Facebook changed its "misinformation" policies to appease them.
Coercing private businesses to censor free speech is about as bad as it gets. And yet it's wholly unsurprising for the Biden administration.
White House Wanted COVID Jokes Or Inconvenient Facts Removed
To modern progressives like Slavitt, the first amendment is an inconvenient handcuff to be discarded at the first opportunity.
Free speech took a backseat to removing memes, jokes, or in other cases accurate information that debunked government-sponsored arguments. And tech companies played along to avoid negative repercussions.
These emails are as bad as it gets for the Biden administration. The government can't coerce companies to censor speech on their behalf.
Yet that's exactly what they did, with little fear of being caught or held accountable. Knowing that the media would always support their efforts and look the other way instead of investigating wrongdoing.
The Biden administration has shown no remorse for their relentless desire to censor free speech, appealing a court decision that would restrict such communications with social media companies.
As always, those who claim to be on the side of "defending democracy" are most often the ones subverting Americans' rights.