Facebook Admits Suppressing ‘”Often-True Content” on COVID-19 Vax in Emails to White House

Facebook informed an official at Biden White House that they believed the Big Tech company They not only suppressed misinformation, but also took actions against it “virality” Of “often-true content” Information regarding COVID-19 vaccines

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey released these documents earlier in the week. Bailey obtained them through a court case, Missouri v. Biden, alleging that some of President Joe Biden’s top officials “colluded with Big Tech social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech under the First Amendment.”

“I want to protect Missourians and the freedoms they enjoy, which is why as attorney general, I will always defend the Constitution,” Bailey spoke The Daily Signal Send an email to Thursday “This case is about the Biden administration’s blatant disregard for the First Amendment and its collusion with Big Tech social media companies to suppress speech it disagrees with.”

“I will always fight back against unelected bureaucrats who seek to indoctrinate the people of this state by violating our constitutional right to free and open debate,” The Missouri attorney General pledged.

In an email to White House dated March 21, 2021, a Facebook staff member discussed “levers for tackling vaccine hesitancy content” with Andrew Slavitt, then a senior adviser on Biden’s COVID-19 response team, and Rob Flaherty, White House director of digital strategy.

“You also asked us about our levers for reducing virality of vaccine hesitancy content,” The Facebook employee wrote, but his identity was not revealed. “As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.”

“We’ll remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content,” The Facebook staffer then added. The Facebook staffer then promised to do so. “More on this front as we proceed to implement.”

In this email to the White House, the Facebook representative admitted to preventing exposure of content that doesn’t violate Facebook’s policies—content that isn’t “actionable.” A staffer suggested that Facebook was asked by the White House for these measures.

The following is an April 22, 2021, emailFlaherty informed Google staff that the White House is still “concerned that Youtube [sic] is ‘funneling’ people into hesitance and intensifying people’s hesitancy. We certainly recognize that removing content that is unfavorable to the cause of increasing vaccine adoption is not a realistic—or even good—solution.”

The White House’s digital strategy chief added that combating vaccine hesitancy “is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH [White House],” An apparent reference to President Obama himself.

Flaherty suggested to Facebook that the social media platform take action against Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, and Tomi Lahren, conservative journalist, in an email dated April 14, 2021.

“Since we’ve been on the phone—the top post about vaccines today is tucker [sic] Carlson saying they don’t work,” Flaherty wrote. “Yesterday was Tomi Lehren [sic] saying she won’t take one. This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ actually looks like—if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with tucker [sic] Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then … I’m not sure it’s reduction!”

In a May 12, 2021, email, the White House’s Flaherty faulted Instagram, which Facebook owns, for failing to remove “bad information” Search function. He seems aggressive in pushing for censorship.

“You know and I know that the universe of undecided people searching Instagram for ‘vaccines’—as compared to, say, Google—is probably low,” Flaherty wrote. “But ‘removing bad information from search’ is one of the easy, low-bar things you guys do to make people like me think you’re taking action. If you’re not getting that right, it raises even more questions about the high bar stuff.”

“You say in your note that you remove accounts that discourage vaccination from appearing in recommendations (even though you’re using ‘primarily’ to give yourself wiggle room),” Flaherty was added. “You also said you don’t promote those accounts in search.”

Flaherty then compared Instagram with other social media platforms.

“Youtube [sic], for their warts, has done pretty well at promoting authoritative info in search results while keeping the bad stuff off of those surfaces,” The White House official stated. “Pinterest doesn’t even show you any results other than official information when you search for ‘vaccines.’ I don’t know why you guys can’t figure this out.”

Neither Facebook nor the White House responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

These documents confirm the close connection between the federal government, Big Tech companies as revealed in the recently published “Twitter Files.”

The Justice Department and FBI pressured tech companies like Twitter to suppress information, according to internal documents released by Musk as CEO. “misinformation,” Particularly on the COVID-19 epidemic. Twitter executives and government officials sometimes took aim at scientists posting their professional opinions on the social networking site.

The Twitter was also paid by the FBI more than $3 million while the intelligence community was pressuring the tech company to suppress news about Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Big Tech’s censorship has not abated, either. December saw the following: YouTube has removed a video Two doctors and an expert from Heritage Foundation presented the case against the video, alleging that it violated its misinformation policy regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. YouTube didn’t identify which of the four speakers supposedly had violated the policy.

Roger SeverinoThe move was described by the former director of The Office for Civil Rights at The Department of Health and Human Services and current vice president for domestic at The Heritage Foundation. “Kafkaesque.” (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)

“I wish I knew exactly what triggered YouTube’s ire, but they remain imperiously vague,” The Daily Signal was informed by Severino. “It is Kafkaesque to be placed in YouTube jail and not be told what the alleged crime was or even who committed it.”

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