The latest batch of revelations into the social media censorship directed by the Biden White House reveal a range of broad, often petty, censorship demands, some of which are purely requests to boost President Biden’s image and show him and his family in a better light.

The revelations came as part of the discovery in the ongoing lawsuit against the government for its alleged First Amendment violations, making clear requests to silence American citizens through online platforms.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, shared some of the documents obtained during discovery.

Today we explore some of the new revelations:

Flagging “often true” content
The documents show that White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty pressured Facebook to censor “borderline content” that did not necessarily violate the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policies, but could result in vaccine hesitancy.

On March 21, 2021, Facebook caved to the pressure and agreed to limit the spread of “often true content” that undermines people’s confidence in vaccines by removing groups and pages that are “disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content.”

White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty sent an email to Facebook with the subject line, “You are hiding the ball.” In the email, Flaherty referenced an article by The Washington Post about research by Facebook on the drivers of vaccine hesitancy on its platform. Flaherty added the White House’s COVID-19 response team senior adviser Andy Slavitt to the thread.

An executive, whose name is redacted in the documents, replied that there was a “misunderstanding.” Flaherty replied that he had been asking “pretty directly” about how much “borderline content” has been increasing vaccine hesitancy and the steps the company is taking to reduce the spread of such content.

Flaherty noted that The Post’s report showed “you have data on the impact of borderline content” but the company was taking him in circles when he asks for it. He added that the White House was “gravely concerned” that Facebook is a “top driver” of vaccine hesitancy and they wanted to know what Facebook is doing about it and how the White House could help and to confirm that “you’re not playing a shell game with us.”

Slavitt wrote that Facebook appeared to be “trying to meet a minimum hurdle instead of trying to solve the problem” of misinformation compared to other platforms.

“You also asked us about our levers for reducing virality of vaccine hesitancy content,” the Facebook staffer replied. “As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.”

Demanded a reduction in “general skepticism”

Andy Slavit, a senior adviser on the White House COVID-19 response team asked about misinformation on WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta. A Facebook executive said that WhatsApp already has “forward limits and labels” that reduce the viral spread of misinformation. The executive pointed to a change made in April 2020 that reduced the spread of repeatedly forwarded messages by 70%.

Unimpressed with the changes, Flaherty told Facebook that the bigger issue was “general skepticism.” He asked how the company was measuring the effectiveness of the changes.

Wanted Twitter to remove or label First Lady Jill Biden meme video

Deputy Director of Digital Strategy Christian Tom emailed Twitter about a meme video featuring the audio of a kid cursing and yelling at The First Lady, telling her her to shut up, just as she’s about to read a storybook to a young audience.

“Would you mind looking at this video and helping us with next steps to put a label or remove it?” Tom asked.

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LINK:
https://reclaimthenet.org/the-white-houses-social-media-censorship-demands/