Most conservatives have known for years that Facebook is censoring us. I’ve written about it multiple times here at PJ Media, including about how they’ve throttled our content on the platform, reduced our reach, and decimated our revenue. Now, thanks to a lawsuit by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, we’re getting a look at the internal machinations that led to censorship decisions and the extent to which the White House was involved—including a decision to censor conservative media figures Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren.
During the discovery phase of the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, alleging social media censorship efforts by the Biden White House, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry unearthed documents proving that the government was directly involved in shutting down discussions related to the Covid pandemic—the most damning proof we’ve seen yet of First Amendment violations.
The revelations come via a series of emails between Biden administration officials and Facebook employees tasked with liaising with the White House. One email from Andrew Slavitt, senior advisor to Biden’s COVID-19 response coordinator, dated March 15, 2021, has the subject line, “You are hiding the ball.” Flaherty accuses Facebook of driving vaccine hesitancy. “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy—period,” he wrote. “We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game… This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us.” The email goes on to ominously warn: “Internally we have been considering our options on what to do about it.”
Then on April 14, 2021, Rob Flaherty, then director of digital strategy for the White House, wrote to a Facebook official (and copied Flaherty) complaining about a Tucker Carlson video discussing the risk of blood clots with the J&J COVID vaccine (you can read the emails for yourself below). “Since we’ve been on the phone—the top post about vaccines today is Tucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday was Tomi Lehren saying she won’t’ take one,” he said. “This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ [of posts from the vaccine hesitant] actually looks like—if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with tucker [sic] Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then…I’m not sure it’s reduction!”
The Facebook official replied, “Running this down now.”
Related: There Are Receipts: Joe Biden’s White House Directed Facebook COVID-19 Censorship
Slavitt jumped into the email thread: “Number one on Facebook. Sigh. Big reveal call with FB and WH today. No progress since we spoke. Sigh.”
Apparently, Facebook didn’t respond quickly enough to the White House’s demands, so Flaherty shot back three hours later, “These questions weren’t rhetorical.”
The Facebook official countered that Tucker’s wasn’t actually the most popular piece of content on the platform, citing vaccine-related posts from the New York Times, CNN, the CDC, and others, and explained that the post had been demoted, slapped with a “pointer to authoritative COVID information,” and is “not being recommended to people.”
“Regardless of popularity,” he added, “the Tucker Carlson video does not qualify for removal under our policies.”
He explained that following the government’s decision the day before to put a “pause” on the J&J vaccine, “We are allowing claims that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine causes blood clots, but we still do not allow categoria claims that it or other vaccines are unsafe or ineffective.”
Seemingly frustrated with the decision not to remove the video, Flaherty emailed again at 11:20 p.m. that night: “I guess this is a good example of your rules in practice then—and a chance to dive in on questions as they’re applied.”
“How was [Tucker’s video] not violative?” Flaherty demanded. “The second half of the segment is raising conspiracy theories about the government hiding that all vaccines aren’t effective. It’s not just about J&J. What exactly is the rule for removal vs. demoting? What does that mean? There’s 40,000 shares on the video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How effective is that?”
“Not for nothing,” he added in a cryptic message from his iPhone, “but the last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection.” In other words, Flaherty blamed Facebook’s policies for the Jan. 6th Capitol riot.
As I noted at the top of this post, Facebook has been throttling Facebook’s content for more than a year. They used bogus COVID fact-checks to justify their censorship, and now we know the White House was intimately involved in deciding what COVID information we were allowed to see on the platform. At a time of great uncertainty, as Americans were locked down, put out of work, dying alone in nursing homes, and worried about the vaccine, Joe Biden had his top staffers shut down good-faith dissent, even from renowned doctors, a move that put all of us at risk. Moreover, they violated one of our most precious rights—the First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech.
Throughout this dark period in our history, PJ Media has refused to back down. We’ve covered everything from the origins of the COVID-19 virus to the disgraceful policies of blue-state governors to the side effects of the vaccines. If you’d like to support the work we do here, please become a VIP member today. With your help, we can fight back against the lies, the censorship, and the jackbooted Biden administration. Use the promo code SAVEAMERICA for a 40% discount on your membership.
White House Pressures Facebook to Censor Tucker Carlson by PJ Media on Scribd
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