It’s no secret by now that Big Tech and the Biden-Harris administration worked together to censor Americans who dared to criticize the White House or question the official narrative during the pandemic—about COVID, its origins, the vaccines, and more. As a House Judiciary Committee report noted, the suppression of free speech distorted the public debate concerning these issues, leading to policies that devastated schoolchildren academically, socially, and emotionally, forced scores of Americans to take newly developed jabs or risk losing their livelihoods, wreaked havoc on the global economy, and more.
But just how far did Big Tech go to assist government censors? Newly released documents from America First Legal’s litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Facebook made it easier than ever for government employees to block free speech by setting up a censorship portal.
These documents reveal how Facebook, on the heels of extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House (including from Rob Flaherty, a current senior Harris Campaign staffer) to remove specific posts, responded:
- Facebook created a new “end-to-end workflow” so that government officials could submit links for removal from Facebook;
- Facebook only gave access to the portal to approved government and law enforcement personnel;
- The new portal dramatically increased the efficiency of the censorship machine by allowing up to twenty links at a time to be referred for censoring;
- By moving from email chains to a Facebook-hosted portal, the new system also made it harder for organizations like AFL to provide oversight to individual censorship requests;
- Each censorship request automatically generated a ticket number so that the government could track if Facebook complied with its censorship demands;
- The documents further show how Facebook explained precisely what content it would remove and what it needed from the CDC in order to censor certain narratives within the bounds of its “community standards.”
This release comes on the heels of recently released documents from that lawsuit, which exposed the United Kingdom’s influence on the Biden-Harris Administration’s censorship policy, and Zuckerberg’s admission that Facebook only engaged in censorship after extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House.
The Intercept previously released excerpts from this slide deck, but AFL is now publishing the entire deck for the first time. (America First Legal)
/7 This came in response to profanity-laden demands from senior Biden–Harris White House officials exposed by @JudiciaryGOP
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) September 25, 2024
As their “End-to-end workflow” described, if “Government requests,” then “Facebook processes.” pic.twitter.com/8uXug5TTFB
AFL obtained slides from a presentation Facebook gave to CDC employees on May 19, 2021, showing the simplified way to submit censorship requests through its "Government Reporting System." CDC staffers could submit up to 20 links at a time for removal, with employees able to select reasons such as "COVID Misinformation," "Vaccine Discouragement," and "COVID Vaccine Misinformation."
/15 Facebook’s system allowed users from “authorized government agencies” to refer up to twenty links at a time for Facebook to remove across its platforms. Users could also submit additional comments. pic.twitter.com/K6jGcACNM5
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) September 25, 2024
Before the censorship portal had been created, government employees were submitting links through spreadsheets via email. The new system allowed government to avoid recordkeeping requirements, AFL noted.
/12 Additionally, moving the censorship requests to a Facebook-hosted portal created a loophole in government recordkeeping requirements.
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) September 25, 2024
Using this system permits government actors to evade federal law requiring meticulous keeping of federal records, thereby preventing the…
“These documents show–definitively–the architecture behind the systems that political appointees and governmental bureaucrats used to unconstitutionally censor the free speech of Americans online," Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Executive Director, said in a statement. "The right to speak–to even question authority–is so fundamental to our national identity, yet in the name of a public health crisis, Biden Administration officials worked with major companies to silence dissent. The American people need to review these documents and understand just how far our leaders in Washington went to violate the First Amendment to our Constitution."
