Facebook posts censored at Biden admin’s request include COVID-19 memes, satire

The Harris-Biden administration’s campaign to censor COVID-related content on Facebook during the height of the pandemic — as revealed by a contrite Mark Zuckerberg this week — was so aggressive that it even cracked down on light-hearted memes, satirical posts and jokes. common old.

On Monday, Zuckerberg acknowledged in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured” Facebook parent Meta to “censor” pandemic-related content in 2021, as well as reporting The Post’s exclusive on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.

The takedown requests included posts Zuckerberg deemed “humorous and satirical.” While he didn’t provide specifics, some examples were previously detailed in the “Facebook Files” compiled by Jordan and released to the public on X starting in July 2023.

In April 2021, Facebook’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, told colleagues that Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to Biden on COVID-19 policy, was “outraged — not a strong word to describe his reaction — that we didn’t drop” a certain ball. Sorted post about vaccines.

The post was a meme shared by Facebook user Timothy McComas, which used a popular format depicting actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood showing his TV screen with a beer and cigarette in hand.

The meme was captioned: “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hearing…. “Have you or a loved one received the vaccine against Covid? You may be right…”

Clegg said he “contested that the removal of such content would represent a significant incursion into the traditional boundaries of free expression in the US”.

Slavitt rejected the argument and claimed the post and others like it “significantly inhibit confidence in COVID vaccines among those the Biden Administration is trying to reach.”

In another case, Facebook bowed to White House pressure to censor a Tucker Carlson video about the COVID-19 pandemic by agreeing to limit its reach by 50% — even though the company’s internal review determined that the video did not violate its policies.

During an April 5, 2021 call with Facebook employees, Courtney Rowe, who at the time was a senior strategic communications adviser to Biden on COVID-19 policy, mocked Facebook users’ ability to share the truth from fiction to page.

“If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB, it’s the truth,” Rowe said. “What we need is help to push past the myths.”

By July 2021, President Biden had publicly attacked Facebook, stating that the site was “killing people” by not cracking down on alleged “disinformation” about COVID-19.

The White House also wanted Facebook to ban what it described as “vaccine-hesitant content,” including “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine is not safe,” according to a document leaked by Jordan.

As pressure mounted, a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy circulated a memo in July 2021 detailing the gap between what the White House wanted suppressed and what the company was comfortable doing.

“The WH has previously indicated that he thinks humor should be removed if the vaccine is thought to have side effects, so we expect he would similarly want to remove humor about vaccine hesitancy,” the VP wrote, according to a document obtained from the Wall Street Journal.

“I can’t in a million years see Mark being happy about getting rid of it – and I wouldn’t recommend it,” Clegg replied.

However, by August 2021, Facebook brass had agreed to come up with methods “to be more aggressive against Covid and vaccine misinformation.”

“This stems from ongoing criticism of our approach by the US administration,” a company document said.

In his Monday letter to the committee, Zuckerberg said Meta has since adopted policies to ensure similar censorship “doesn’t happen again.”

“As I told our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any administration in either direction — and we stand ready to back down if something like this happens again,” he wrote. .

The House Judiciary Committee has “destroyed some people from Facebook” while digging into the censorship campaign, Jordan said in an interview with The Post.

“They went for it,” Jordan said. “I think he makes it clear that they regret doing that and they said, in the future, on both sides, you know, they’re not going to bow to government pressure. They will not trust these ‘independent’ fact checkers.”

Facebook also deserves blame for its handling of the situation, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University.

Turley noted that the social media giant has fully embraced “content moderation” for years — only to reverse course after Congress comes knocking.

“Now, Zuckerberg and Meta want people to know that they were pressured to censor and truly regret their role in silencing dissenting voices,” Turley said in a column published by Fox News. “It’s the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure.”

The White House defended its actions this week, arguing that it “encouraged responsible action to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe that technology companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the American people as they make independent choices about the information they present,” the House said. White.

Additional reporting by Steven Nelson