White House official demanded Facebook squelch 'general skepticism' of vaccines
The Biden White House wasn't just concerned about purported COVID-19 misinformation when in its first year it cajoled and argued with tech platforms to censor, throttle and label content — even in private messaging apps.
It was alarmed that people might believe a child told First Lady Jill Biden to "shut the f*** up" — or simply enjoy the alteration of a C-SPAN clip.
The communications between federal officials and platforms are the latest revealed in discovery in the First Amendment lawsuit against the feds by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general and the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing censored social media users including epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya.
NCLA attorney Jenin Younes and her client Aaron Kheriaty, fired by the University of California Davis for refusing COVID vaccination based on natural immunity, shared some of the documents in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Sunday night.
Younes provided Just the News other, as-yet unpublished, email threads, including the "STFU" back-and-forth, which resembles the administration's irritation at accounts parodying COVID adviser Anthony Fauci.
Twitter apparently stood firm against White House demands to remove or "put a label" on the altered Jill Biden clip, in which she reads to children in the White House.
"Did that kid just yell 'STFU'?" Twitter user "Art TakingBack" wrote Nov. 29, 2021. "Pretty sure it's fake but funny," he tweeted a minute later in the same thread, which was live for at least 10 days. Archives show the account was suspended last fall.
Deputy Director of Digital Strategy Christian Tom brought the thread to Twitter's attention the next day and got a response in six minutes, showing the priority platforms give censorship requests from federal officials.
But the unidentified executive said the altered clip didn't "cause harm or impact public safety" as required for action under its "manipulated media" policy. (Non-government names are redacted in all documents.)
At this point, Tom brought in Michael LaRosa, the First Lady's press secretary. The officials pointed to Twitter policy language saying it would "likely" remove altered and deceptively shared tweets even with no harm.
The dispute dragged into mid-December. Even though the incident is "not as much in the public eye right now ... it's really important to us that this is addressed," in part to set "a precedent for other moments," Tom wrote. Twitter reiterated the matter was closed because of the "low risk" of associated harm.
Tom wouldn't let it go, adding his boss Rob Flaherty to the thread. "[T]his all reads to me," Tom wrote, "like you all are bending over backwards to say that this isn't causing confusion on public issues" despite an Associated Press fact-check of the clip. The Twitter executive invited Flaherty to call.
Flaherty's messages are notable for recurring overt hostility and scolding toward the tech executives on the receiving end.
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LINK:
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/jill-biden-stfu-clip-whatsapp-conversations-targeted-white-house-censorship
