Summarised by Centrist
Newly released documents by America First Legal (AFL) show how Facebook created a portal specifically to censor what the government labelled as “COVID & Vaccine Misinformation.”
The documents detail Facebook’s efficiency in censoring posts flagged by the government with an “End-to-end workflow” system devised by Facebook “to make it easy” to censor people.
Facebook’s compliance with the government’s censorship demands also created loopholes in federal recordkeeping to avoid public transparency laws making oversight difficult.
The system permitted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees to submit up to twenty posts at a time through a Facebook-hosted portal.
The system to censor online users “came in response to profanity-laden demands from senior Biden–Harris White House officials.” And according to AFL, Facebook claims to have removed at least “16 million pieces of content.”
Gene Hamilton of AFL stated, “The right to speak–to even question authority–is so fundamental to our national identity, yet in the name of a public health crisis, Biden Administration officials worked with major companies to silence dissent.”
This release follows earlier reports on the UK’s influence over U.S. censorship policies, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s admission that pressure from the Biden Administration led to the company’s censorship practices.
