House Judiciary Committee report reveals tensions between Meta and Biden admin over COVID-19 censorship

05/09/2024 / By Ava Grace

A report by the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) has revealed tensions between Big Tech company Meta Platforms and the Biden administration over censorship matters related to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

The HJC report released on May 1 contained documents the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) earlier elaborated on. Per the report, Meta executives viewed their interactions with the Biden White House as a “knife fight.” This description followed President Joe Biden accusing the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg of “killing people” with its inadequate censorship of COVID-19 misinformation in July 2021.

Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg and Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg expressed frustration by means of WhatsApp messages, with Clegg describing the White House’s behavior as “highly cynical and dishonest.” The discourse also touched upon the controversy of the lab leak theory, with Zuckerberg querying whether to publicly acknowledge the White House’s pressure to censor discussions around it.

Further tension was highlighted when former White House Digital Strategy Director Robert Flaherty suggested Facebook “change the algorithm” to favor corporate news over conservative outlets, as indicated in documents reviewed last August.

Flaherty made the suggestion in an April 2o21 call between the White House and Facebook, according to the HJC’s report. He characterized legacy publications as “authoritative” while calling conservative sources “polarizing,” according to the transcript reviewed by the DCNF. (Related: COLLUSION: Biden regime ordered Facebook to tweak algorithms to suppress Republicans.)

Flaherty asked at the time: “If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see [the New York Times], [the Wall Street Journal or] any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?”

Flaherty also demanded that Meta CENSOR Tucker Carlson

The White House official asked that question after an unnamed Meta executive brought up the possibility that public figures’ speech may lead to more vaccine hesitancy. The executive referenced Lahren, the host of “Tomi Lahren is Fearless” on OutKick, who posted that she didn’t plan to get the COVID-19 injection.

In April 2021, the White House also pressured Meta to censor a video produced by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. According to a document from Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry released during his time as the Pelican State’s attorney general, the censorship arose from Carlson – now with his own Tucker Carlson Network – saying “vaccines don’t work.” An injunction from a federal judge noted that the said video did not breach the Facebook platform’s policy.

Questions about the validity of certain censorship efforts by the White House were also raised, particularly concerning the British Center For Countering Digital Hate’s (CCDH) “Disinformation Dozen” report released in March 2021. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, Dr. Joseph Mercola, the late Dr. Rashid Buttar and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were included in the CCDH’s list of 12 disinfo purveyors.

The CCDH’s Disinfo Dozen report was used by the White House to encourage censorship on Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram. But emails previously obtained by the HJC suggested that Meta doubted the accuracy of the British nonprofit’s findings.

Head over to Censorship.news for more similar stories.

Watch Mike Benz explaining how the Biden administration pressured Meta to censor information about the COVID-19 injection in the clip below.

This video is from the GalacticStorm channel on Brighteon.com.