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Facebook Files Continues to Show Damning Evidence on Big Tech's Collusion to Censor Americans

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 28, 2023 4:00 PM

Especially now that Republicans control the House and have subpoena power to exert, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has been looking to get to the bottom of revealing the details of how Big Tech, including social media platforms like Facebook, caved to pressure from the Biden administration and colluded with the federal government to censor Americans. The Committee subpoenaed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February and had been prepared to hold him in contempt on Thursday until Meta finally handed over internal documents. 

While Jordan revealed that the Committee was not pursuing contempt at this time since the documents were received, the chairman shared some pretty damning information in a thread on Thursday, the first part of the "Facebook Files." He released part two on Friday, which included a write-up in The Wall Street Journal. 

As we all know, the White House was very intent on pushing and even mandating the COVID-19 vaccine. But, as a result of Jordan's threat, it was revealed that there was "a public and SECRET campaign to get Facebook to more aggressively police vaccine-related content, including TRUE information." Such a campaign meant censoring Americans, even if it came at the cost of usurping First Amendment rights. 

As Jordan laid out in his thread, such censorship applied to the lab leak theory as well. Once smeared as a conspiracy theory, the idea that COVID came from a lab leak is looking more likely by the day. 

Thursday's thread discussed at length emails detailing interactions between Nick Clegg, Facebook's president for global affairs, and a senior advisor to President Joe Biden, Andy Slavitt. Friday's thread includes an email from July 2021, in which Facebook's head of Global Affairs asked why the platform was censoring the Covid lab leak theory by "removing -- rather than demoting/labeling -- claims" of this nature. It makes note of Clegg and Slavitt as well.

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"Because we were under pressure from the administration and others to do more," the highlighted portion of the email response reads, before noting that this "was part of the 'more' package." Facebook even removed claims that "multiple fact checkers had labeled false, even though we didn't have a harm assessment," the email reads, going on to admit "[w]e shouldn't have done it." 

As Jordan called to mind in his previous thread, the president claimed to reporters on July 16, 2021, that social media platforms were "killing people" because they did not engage in more censorship. On July 19, 2021, the president had to clarify he was referring to users of those platforms spreading "outrageous information." 

Jordan's thread shows July 16, 2021, emails in which "Facebook employees initially bristled at President Biden's accusation," with one email from that evening referring to "untested assumptions." A highlighted portion of the email notes how the administration's "definition of 'misinfo' is completely unclear" and that "it also just seems like when the vaccination campaign isn't going as hoped, it's convenient for them to blame us..." 

An email response minutes later showed another employee agreeing. "This seems like a political battle that's not fully grounded in facts, and it's frustrating," the highlighted portion of the email read. The email also teased, "Hopefully, we'll have a bit more to say on this soon." 

"BUT the tongue-lash­ing directly caused Face­book to re-eval­u­ate its poli­cies about COVID-19 con­tent—discussions that in­volved high-level com­pany of­fi­cials," Jordan goes on to say in the thread, which included Clegg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg. 

Jordan's Thursday thread emphasized the absurdity of the Biden administration wanting a meme removed. When it comes to "Vaccine Hesitant Content," documents revealed that "[t]he WH generally objects to content that appears in media criticism of our covid misinfo efforts," even though Facebook didn't even have specifics. "While we don't have specifics, we can extrapolate that they would like us to remove content that provides any negative information on or opinions about the vaccine without concluding that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh that information or opinion[.]" As the highlighted portion of the document indicated, this includes "humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn't safe[.]"

"Seriously, jokes were too much!" Jordan emphasized in his tweet. 

The administration couldn't even handle true content that went against their narrative. In a document discussing what to do about "True information," it was revealed that "[t]he Surgeon General [Vivek Murthy] wants us [Facebook] to remove true information about side effects," as revealed in the highlighted portion, "if the user does not provide complete information about whether the side effect is rare and treatable."

Although the document indicated "[w]e do not recommend pursuing this practice," more documents revealed that Facebook was still looking to please the administration. Clegg emailed colleagues, "Sheryl [Sandberg] is keen that we continue to explore some moves that we can make to show that we are trying to be responsive to the WH." They had even considered "blackholing" certain URLs. 

Clegg also raised concerns about "a recipe for protracted and increasing acrimony with the WH as the vaccine roll out continues to stutter through the Fall and the Winter." 

Ultimately, in August, Facebook "relented," Jordan explained, due to "continued pressure." 

"Leadership asked Misinfo Policy and a couple of teams on Product Policy to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against Covid and vaccine misinformation. This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the US administration and a desire to kick the tires further internally on creative options," one document read. 

Jordan also linked to a CNN article from August 18, 2021, to share how "Facebook caved to the White House. Again." 

The article explained how action was taken against the "disinformation dozen" a month after the White House put pressure on Facebook:

Facebook on Wednesday announced that it had taken action against the so-called “disinformation dozen,” one month after the White House singled out the twelve people and argued that they were responsible for a majority of coronavirus misinformation.

In making the announcement, Monika Bickert, vice president of content policy at Facebook, pushed back against the narrative that the twelve accounts were primarily responsible for the spread of vaccine misinformation, writing that focusing on them “misses the forest for the trees.”

But, Bickert said, “Any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.”

Bickert added that Facebook had “also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people” and “applied penalties to some of their website domains.”

The “disinformation dozen” was initially identified in March by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate which called on Facebook (FB) to shut down pages operated by those people.

The White House seized on that report and hammered the platform in July for allowing the people identified in the report to remain on its platform.

“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.

Further down in the article is buried how one of the accounts belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running against Biden in the Democratic presidential primary. 

Jordan teased even more Facebook Files to come. 

The Facebook Files also caught the attention of journalist Matt Taibbi, who has released many editions of the Twitter Files on a range of topics. Taibbi has testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which falls under the Judiciary Committee and Jordan also chairs, and even faced threats from Democratic members.