A House Judiciary Committee investigation has seemingly revealed that Facebook censored content on COVID-19, including reducing the reach of a post by Tucker Carlson by 50%, at the behest of the White House.
The details of the Biden administration’s alleged demands that the company censor speech were disclosed by Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), per the New York Post.
In April 2021, a Facebook employee allegedly wrote to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House” to censor posts skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines, according to the NY Post.
The White House purportedly demanded that Facebook take action against humorous and satirical posts that questioned the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, according to a review of Facebook emails by The Wall Street Journal dating to the spring and summer of 2021.
The content that the White House allegedly wanted removed included a meme depicting Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood pointing at a television while wearing an incredulous expression, captioned: “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear … Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled…” per the NY Post.
According to an internal April 2021 email apparently written by Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, the White House senior advisor on COVID-19 policy to President Biden, Andy Slavitt, purportedly “was outraged — not too strong a word to describe his reaction — that [Facebook] did not remove [the DiCaprio meme] post,” per the NY Post.
The email alleged that Clegg had “countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US,” but that Slavitt was unconvinced, reported the NY Post.
Slavitt apparently wanted the post removed because by “directly comparing Covid vaccines to asbestos poisoning,” as the email explained, the post “demonstrably inhibits confidence in Covid vaccines amongst those the Biden Administration is trying to reach,” per the NY Post.
The video posted by Carlson that was reportedly demoted was not identified or described by the documents released by Congressman Jordan. Jordan did claim that it was suppressed even though it did not violate any internal Facebook policies, per the NY Post.
A spokesman for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee defended the concept of removing some posts in a statement.
“In 2021, in the darkest days of the pandemic, of course the Biden administration was working every possible angle to keep people alive,” it read, according to the WSJ.
The statement also claimed that all the witnesses testified that Meta (the parent company of Facebook) was able to enforce its standards at its own discretion, independently of the government.
“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 said, per the WSJ.