{"id":1629663,"date":"2022-09-01T12:48:06","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T16:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629663"},"modified":"2022-09-01T12:48:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T16:48:12","slug":"revealed-over-50-biden-admin-employees-12-u-s-agencies-involved-in-social-media-censorship-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/revealed-over-50-biden-admin-employees-12-u-s-agencies-involved-in-social-media-censorship-push\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: Over 50 Biden Admin Employees &#8211;  12 U.S. Agencies Involved in Social Media Censorship Push"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frevealed-over-50-biden-admin-employees-12-u-s-agencies-involved-in-social-media-censorship-push%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629663&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Over 50 officials in President Joe Biden\u2019s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-big-tech\">Big Tech<\/a> companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Sept. 1.<\/p>\n<p>Senior officials in the U.S. government, including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty, and onetime White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt, have been in touch with one or more major social media companies to try to get the companies to tighten rules on allegedly false and misleading information on COVID-19, and take action against users who violate the rules, the documents show.<\/p>\n<p>In July 2021, for instance, after Biden said that Facebook was \u201ckilling people\u201d by not combating misinformation effectively, an executive at Meta <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/22273648-meta-and-hhs-messages\">reached out to<\/a> Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee, to say that government and Meta teams met after the remarks \u201cto better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The same executive later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/22273647-white-house-and-facebook-interactions\">wrote to Murthy<\/a> saying, \u201cI wanted to make sure you saw the steps we took just this past week to adjust policies on what we are removing with respect to misinformation, as well as steps taken to further address the \u2018disinfo dozen,&#8217;\u201d including removing pages linked to the group.<\/p>\n<p>The White House <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/biden-administration-pushes-social-media-companies-to-combat-covid-19-misinformation_3903450.html\">publicly pressured<\/a> social media companies to take action against a group officials dubbed the \u201cdisinformation dozen,\u201d which a nonprofit claimed were producing the bulk of \u201canti-vaccine misinformation\u201d on the platforms. Also in July 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/surgeon-general-facebooks-efforts-to-combat-alleged-covid-19-misinformation-is-not-enough_3906879.html\">Murthy said<\/a> Facebook had not done enough to combat misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>In another exchange in October 2021,\u00a0Rob Flaherty, director of digital strategy for the White House, emailed a Facebook worker sharing a link to a story about misinformation on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot even sure what to say at this point,\u201d he wrote, triggering a defensive response from the worker, who said the company was working to combat misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>In a text in February 2021, meanwhile, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, wrote to another agency official that she was \u201ctrying to get us\u00a0in a place where Fed can work with platforms to better understand the mis\/dis trends so relevant agencies can try to prebunk\/debunk as useful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The documents were part of a preliminary production in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/federal-judge-orders-biden-administration-to-cooperate-in-social-media-collusion-lawsuit_4595222.html\">a lawsuit<\/a> levied against the government by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/great-barrington-declaration-authors-join-lawsuit-against-alleged-government-big-tech-collusion_4640259.html\">later joined<\/a> by experts maligned by federal officials.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018Censorship Enterprise\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>Plaintiffs said the massive pressure campaign amounted to a \u201cCensorship Enterprise\u201d because it involved so many officials and agencies.<\/p>\n<p>Government lawyers only identified 45 officials at five agencies\u2014the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/cdc-met-with-big-tech-officials-in-bid-to-tackle-covid-19-misinformation-emails-show_4630326.html\">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a> (CDC), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Murthy\u2019s office\u2014who communicated with social media companies on misinformation, but documents they produced showed others were involved, including officials at the Census Bureau and the Departments of Treasury and State.<\/p>\n<p>Responses from the Big Tech companies also revealed more officials involved with the effort.<\/p>\n<p>Meta has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials, including top officials at the White House and the Food and Drug Administration, were in communication with it about content moderation. Many of the officials were not identified in the response by the government.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube disclosed 11 officials not disclosed by the government and Twitter identified nine, including senior officials at the State Department.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad,\u201d plaintiffs said, adding later that \u201cit rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the FBI was not identified even though the agency recently said, after Meta CEO revealed that the bureau reached out before the 2020 election, that it routinely issues communications to social media companies.<\/p>\n<p>More discovery is needed to uncover the full breadth of the pressure campaign, plaintiffs told the judge overseeing the case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official Covid messaging, that doubt has been erased,\u201d Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance who is representing some of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/nclalegal.org\/2022\/09\/ncla-suit-uncovers-army-of-federal-bureaucrats-coercing-social-media-companies-to-censor-speech\/\">statement<\/a>. \u201cThe shocking extent of the government\u2019s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social-media companies, has now been revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-zachary-stieber\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Zachary Stieber covers U.S. and world news. He is based in Maryland.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over 50 officials in President Joe Biden\u2019s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1629663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1629663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1629663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1629663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1629663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}