A new report from the House Judiciary Committee provided shocking revelations regarding the Biden administration's attempt to censor information from large social media platforms:
This interim report details the monthslong campaign by the Biden White House to coerce large companies, namely Meta (parent company of Facebook), Alphabet (parent company of YouTube), and Amazon, to censor books, videos, posts, and other content online. By the end of 2021, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon changed their content moderation policies in ways that were directly responsive to criticism from the Biden Administration.
The 800-page report, titled "The Censorship Industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech Companies to Censor Americans, True Information and Critics of the Biden Administration," was based on information obtained through internal communications and emails from Big Tech executives.
The industrial complex of c... by Veronica Silveri
In these conversations, cases are evident in which the platforms censored information related to COVID-19 due to pressure from the federal government. They note that the Biden administration wanted to completely eliminate "vaccine misinformation."
Facebook and Amazon described Biden's demands as "pressure"
The report also found that while some executives struggled not to bow to pressure from the White House, others complied with Biden's demands to avoid bigger problems. Likewise, it revealed that "both Facebook and Amazon referred to the Biden White House's efforts as 'pressure'":
Now, having obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of emails and other relevant nonpublic documents, the Committee and Select Subcommittee can provide a more complete picture of how and the extent to which the Biden White House coerced companies to suppress free speech.
Last year, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed the executives of several tech giants such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft to investigate their communication with and ties to the federal government.
Jordan commented that he wanted to "understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech."
