In a Thursday press conference, the press secretary to President Joe Biden admitted that the White House is colluding with Facebook to censor content on the social media platform.
“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team — given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic,” Psaki reportedly said.
But as many were quick to point out, information that was previously censored by the Big Tech titan – like the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China – turned out to be plausible, leading to questions of whether the government is colluding with Facebook to censor information today that might be true.
“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s Office,” Psaki continued. “We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
She also noted that “it’s important to take faster action against harmful posts … and Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts.”
The stunning admission was not lost on Glenn Greenwald, one of the world’s most well-known journalists.
“The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as ‘problematic’ so that Facebook can remove them. This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks of fascism — that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support,” he said on Twitter.
“If you don’t find it deeply disturbing that the White House is ‘flagging’ internet content that they deem ‘problematic’ to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian. No other information is needed about you to know that,” he continued.
If you don't find it deeply disturbing that the White House is "flagging" internet content that they deem "problematic" to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian. No other information is needed about you to know that.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 15, 2021
Silicon Valley tech giants, including Facebook, are facing continued scrutiny for their censorship of conservative content.
Last week, former President Donald J. Trump, who is banned from the platform, announced that he was leading a class-action lawsuit against the social media company, along with Twitter and Google.
“Today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I’m filing as the lead class representative a major class action lawsuit against the Big Tech giants Facebook, Google, and Twitter,” Trump said in a speech. “We’re asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to order an immediate halt to social media companies’ illegal, shameful censorship of the American people – and that’s exactly what they are doing.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
