Photo: Alamy
In early 2021, social media giant Facebook came under fire from the public for reported censoring, and now Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has revealed documents showing that Facebook’s censorship was Biden-fueled.
Social media users back in 2021 began to notice that many of their posts, and even memes about COVID-19 vaccines, were censored by Facebook because they violated their community standards. Then came the lawsuit that accused the Biden administration of pressuring Facebook to censor a video of Tucker Carlson warning about adverse side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine.
At the time, both the Biden Administration and Facebook denied these accusations. Now, Jordan has released the documents on Twitter that expose how Facebook’s censorship is fueled by the Biden administration.
In a tweet, Jordan wrote, “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.”
This pressure from the White House was to crack down on “misinformation,” which now turns out this alleged misinformation also included memes of COVID-19 vaccines. It was under the Biden administration that vaccine mandates were carried out, mandates that President Trump denounced.
One of Jordan’s tweets revealed what was said in an email addressed to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the COO, Sheryl Sandberg. In the email, a Facebook employee had written, “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House to remove posts.”
Another email revealed that Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to Biden, ignored the concerns that the censorship was against the First Amendment.
Facebook’s Nick Clegg, president for global affairs, had written in the email, “I countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US.” However, Slavitt was more interested in the negative effect on the Biden administration.
Under immense pressure from the White House, Facebook changed its policy. This was revealed in an email which Jordan tweeted, “to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against . . . misinformation. This stems from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.”
Jordan concludes his findings by writing, “Biden Admin abused its powers to coerce Facebook into censoring Americans, preventing free and open discourse on issues of critical public importance.”
