Government, Big Tech colluding to control flow of information

By maryvillarealdw // 2022-10-06

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The Biden administration and Big Tech companies are colluding to control the flow of information. In a recent episode of "The HighWire," host Del Bigtree talked about a petition filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who are trying to expose the corruption of the current administration. Earlier this summer, the Department of Justice (DOJ) refused to produce communications between federal government bureaucrats and social media officials. So the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general filed a petition with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to compel the federal government to produce the emails. The court ruled in favor of the petition resulting in the recently published batch of emails. The emails procured through the lawsuit filed by Schmitt and Landry detail months of apparent coordination between federal administration officials and social media giants on how to address information regarding Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). "The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this censorship enterprise is extremely broad," Schmitt and Landry said in a joint statement. The lawsuit’s discovery identified 45 federal officials who communicated with social media executives on what information to censor. These new revelations added to questions on whether or not it was appropriate for social media fact-checkers to censor contrarian views, especially inside the scientific community. For instance, Facebook affixed a "Missing Context" label to Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary's Wall Street Journal op-ed about how social media companies put their thumb on the scale in scientific debates over COVID-19. Facebook's fact-checkers said a team of three scientists disagreed with Dr. Makary's conclusion. Although it’s not clear if administration officials intervened specifically on Makary's op-ed, other posts and tweets were directly called out by the White House and removed by social media companies shortly after.

Government officials getting cozy with Big Tech execs

In July of last year, Clarke Humphrey, the White House digital director of the COVID-19 response team, asked an Instagram executive to take down a parody account of Dr. Anthony Fauci. "Any way we can get this pulled down?" Humphrey wrote in an email. "It is not actually one of ours." Less than a minute later the Instagram executive answered, "Yep, on it!" An email from April 2021, meanwhile, discussed a scheduled meeting for Biden staff to be "briefed by Twitter on vaccine misinfo." Later in the summer, a Facebook official proposed to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official that "in addition to our weekly meetings, doing a monthly misinfo/debunking meeting, with maybe claim topics communicated a few days prior so that you can bring in the matching experts and chat casually for 30 minutes or so." The CDC official responded: "Yes, we would love to do that." The emails show many instances where Facebook officials wouldn't go forward on censoring a COVID-19 claim until getting input from the administration's "debunking team." These instances strongly suggest that the Biden administration and Big Tech have combined forces to censor content and control the narrative. Republicans are now proposing legislation to stop the Biden administration from coordinating with social media companies on content censorship. The act, which they titled "Protecting Speech from Government Interference," would prohibit federal bureaucrats and other executive branch officials from encouraging private companies to censor or limit speech. Find more stories about online censorship and the government's role in it at Censorship.news. Watch the video below and listen to the commentary of Del Bigtree regarding the involvement of the Biden administration and Big Tech companies in controlling free speech. This video is from the channel The HighWire with Del Bigtree on Brighteon.com.

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Government officials getting cozy with Big Tech execs

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