President Joe Biden has long prioritized his war on the dreaded “misinformation,” and during the pandemic, he became very close to media giants like Facebook.
Now, Facebook is starting to disclose the extent of its entanglement with the Biden administration. One senior employee discussed “pressure from the administration” in an email obtained by the Wall Street Journal Friday — including the request that the social media giant bury a Tucker Carlson story questioning the narrative.
“Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made,” Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, wrote in a July 2021 email obtained by the Journal.
“We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” a Facebook vice president reportedly responded. “We shouldn’t have done it.”
It didn’t end there. According to the Journal, the Facebook vice president later said, “There is likely a significant gap between what the WH would like us to remove and what we are comfortable removing… 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.”
On one occasion, Clegg reportedly wrote, “I can’t see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that—and I wouldn’t recommend it.” He was apparently referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
They also buried a video by then-Fox News star Tucker Carlson by 50 percent when the Biden administration demanded it.
“To appease the Biden White House, talking points were drafted for Clegg. Facebook was ready to tell the White House that it had demoted a video posted by Tucker Carlson by 50% in response to the White House’s demands, even though the post didn’t violate any policies,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-O.H., said Thursday.
Take a look —
Mark Zuckerberg himself — knowing that all of this evidence was to be imminently released — complained about the constant stream of censorship pressure from the Biden WH, noting that FB was forced to censor not only debatable claims but ones that *turned out to be true*: https://t.co/pZi3GKvOf0 pic.twitter.com/oAUtE85Tat
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 28, 2023
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “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.”
Democrats have argued that the White House was simply voicing a request, rather than forcing Facebook to remove certain posts.
“The documents Mr. Jordan selectively released show that the company often disagreed with the White House and denied the Administration’s requests,” a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats said in a statement to the Journal. “Every witness we have interviewed has confirmed that only Meta made decisions about how to enforce its own terms of service.”
All week, the tech giant has been disclosing documents to the House Judiciary Committee.
Jordan said Thursday, “While these documents are jarring, they are just the beginning of the story… We expect Facebook to continue to produce documents, and if not, contempt remains on the table.”
The Horn editorial team