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by Kyle Becker(Becker News)
In a new release of the Facebook Files, it is shown that the social media giant reportedly took down Covid-19 related content due to coercive pressure from the Biden administration. The new release was reported exclusively by the Wall Street Journal, as mentioned by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Friday.
This included posts suggesting the virus was artificially created. These email exchanges reveal Facebook’s internal debates about moderating users’ posts regarding the pandemic’s origins, which the government was attempting to manage.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s President of Global Affairs, questioned the company’s stance in a July 2021 email: “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made?”
“We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”
This conversation occurred three months after Facebook, now owned by Meta Platforms, ceased the ban on posts alleging that Covid-19 was artificially created or manufactured, considering the growing debate on the virus’s origin.
These internal correspondences were procured by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, investigating what GOP lawmakers argue are the Biden administration’s inappropriate attempts to censor American speech on social media regarding Covid-19 and other topics.
However, the White House has insisted that their discussions aimed at encouraging vaccine adoption and other public health goals. In a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre emphasized the critical responsibility of social media platforms to consider their platforms’ impacts on American people while independently determining their content.
“We have consistently made it clear that we believe social-media companies have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects of their platforms that they have on the American people, while making independent decisions about the content of their platforms,” Jean-Pierre said at a Thursday press briefing.
Despite these revelations, Facebook has consistently maintained that its content moderation decisions are independent and apolitical. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on this issue.
The documents examined by the Journal, dating back to spring and summer of 2021, show that the Biden administration was advocating a national Covid-19 vaccination drive, including a campaign encouraging Facebook to more rigorously moderate vaccine-related content.
Officials believed that misinformation circulating on Facebook was contributing to vaccine hesitancy among Americans, leading President Biden to accuse Facebook of “killing people” in July. These comments prompted Facebook’s upper echelons, including Clegg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, to reassess the company’s stance on Covid-19 content.
After the President’s critical comment, a Facebook VP compiled a memo comparing Facebook’s content policies and the Biden administration’s demands, with the VP suggesting a significant gap existed between the two.
“There is likely a significant gap between what the WH would like us to remove and what we are comfortable removing,” the Facebook vice president said.
They noted, for instance, the White House’s call to act against content making light of vaccine safety, which the company appeared reluctant to comply with. They speculated that removing posts where Americans voiced their vaccine hesitancy might exacerbate their hesitancy, potentially fueling conspiracy theories about vaccine safety cover-ups.
“The WH has previously indicated that it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects, so we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed,” the vice president wrote.
“I can’t see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that—and I wouldn’t recommend it,” Clegg wrote in a subsequent email, apparently referencing CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“There may be risk of pushing them further toward hesitancy by suppressing their speech and making them feel marginalized by large institutions,” said one draft memo to Facebook leadership. Removing such posts could also fuel ‘conspiracy theories’ about a coverup related to the safety of vaccines, the draft memo added.
During this period, Facebook was also aiming to broker a transatlantic data sharing agreement between the U.S. and Europe, complying with privacy laws.
By August 2021, Facebook executives were considering changes to their Covid content policies, including intensifying sanctions for users violating content rules on both Facebook and Instagram, another platform owned by Meta.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House panel, argued that these documents reveal the pressure social media companies, such as Facebook, faced to modify their content moderation policies and restrict free speech to please the federal government and the Biden administration.
“While these documents are jarring, they are just the beginning of the story,” Jordan said. “We expect Facebook to continue to produce documents, and if not, contempt remains on the table.”
However, Jordan called off a committee vote on whether to recommend holding Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for not providing documents about the company’s communication with the government. Facebook has been surrendering additional documents recently and has offered nearly a dozen witnesses for testimony.
A spokesman for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee attempted to justify the violation of Americans’ constitutional rights.
“In 2021, in the darkest days of the pandemic, of course the Biden administration was working every possible angle to keep people alive,” the spokesperson claimed.
“The documents Mr. Jordan selectively released show that the company often disagreed with the White House and denied the Administration’s requests, and every witness we have interviewed has confirmed that only Meta made decisions about how to enforce its own terms of service,” the statement added.
