Newly disclosed documents showing Big Tech companies repeatedly took action after being pressured by White House and other Biden administration officials prove the U.S. government colluded with the companies, according to a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).
“It’s clear that the government was telling Facebook and Twitter and other social media companies what to do and that they were responding and they were doing that, deleting accounts, taking down posts, etc., which really corroborates our state action theory,” the lawyer, Jenin Younes, told The Epoch Times.
The documents were made public this week as part of an ongoing case against the government, brought by two attorneys general, over alleged violations of the First Amendment.
They showed that officials with the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies were in communications with Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other companies regarding content moderation, repeatedly urging the companies to punish users who were promoting alleged COVID-19 misinformation of disinformation.
For example, Rob Flaherty, a White House official, pressured Facebook to take action against “mis- and -disinformation” as well as “hesitancy-inducing content,” one email showed.
After Facebook and White House officials met, a Facebook executive asked the White House to “partner on” plans to address “new misinformation claims” following the expected authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 years.
Flaherty later signaled he wasn’t satisfied, sharing a link to a story about supposed misinformation on Facebook and writing, “not even sure what to say at this point.”
Another administration official, whose name was redacted, reached out to Twitter to offer an expert to brief Twitter on people “citing CDC VAERS data incorrectly,” which it said “is a major source of misinformation.”
VAERS, or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, is a system to which people can report adverse events following vaccination.
Twitter accepted the invitation.
