Facebook built a VIP censorship pipeline for the White House and CDC, documents reveal

By avagrace // 2024-10-02

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Social media platform Facebook reportedly built a VIP censorship pipeline for the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL) have revealed. Onboarding documents obtained by AFL disclosed the link between the CDC and Facebook, with Reclaim The Net describing the endeavor as "a little game of 'whack-a-mole' with freedom of speech." The outlet continued that Facebook "wasn't merely policing what it thought was 'misinformation' on COVID-19 and vaccines; it was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the U.S. government's thought control initiative. The Biden-Harris administration, while trumpeting their 'fight for truth,' had essentially deputized Facebook to clean up the messy world of online discourse." According to the documents, the company under Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms built a slick "end-to-end workflow" tailored for the White House's censorship needs. The system, which could handle up to 20 censorship requests simultaneously, featured an exclusive portal for government and law enforcement officials to post anything deemed necessary to silence critics. Rob Flaherty, former White House director of digital strategy, was at the heart of the effort. (Related: Facebook provided secret online tools and trained CDC employees how to censor the American public.) Moreover, Facebook's censorship strategy focused on content deemed "dangerous" by the CDC. This censorship strategy was done in strict adherence to the platform's so-called "community standards." The exclusive portal also allowed government officials to bypass traditional email communications, which would have been included in Freedom of Information Act requests. "Each censorship request was given a shiny new ticket number, so the government could track Facebook’s obedience to the letter," Reclaim The Net stated. "By using this specialized portal, and not email, the government could skirt those pesky federal record-keeping laws."

AFL head: Right to speak is "fundamental" to America's national identity

"These documents show, definitely, the architecture behind the systems that political appointees and government bureaucrats used to unconstitutionally censor the free speech of Americans online," said AFL Executive Director Gene Hamilton. "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. The American people need to review these documents and understand just how far our leaders in Washington went to violate the First Amendment to our Constitution." The AFL's release of the documents came more than a month after Zuckerberg expressed regret for bowing to government pressure on the issue of censorship. In an Aug. 26 letter to the House Judiciary Committee, the Meta CEO admitted that senior officials in the Biden-Harris administration "repeatedly pressured" his company to "censor certain content" in relation to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

"I think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today. I regret we were not more outspoken about it," Zuckerberg wrote.

"Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction. And we are ready to push back if something like this happens again."

Head over to Censorship.news for similar stories.

Watch this Fox Business report about Rob Flaherty's involvement in the VIP censorship portal used by Facebook to silence content critical of COVID-19. This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.

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AFL head: Right to speak is "fundamental" to America's national identity

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