The White House pressured Facebook* executives for special access to content moderation tools to monitor comments about the Covid-19 virus.
“Given that it’s a global pandemic, can we give agencies access to guidance parameters that they wouldn’t normally have?” Rob Flaherty, President Joe Biden’s director of digital affairs, asked the social network’s executives, according to internal company communications seen by Fox Business.
In the summer of 2021, the Biden Administration began a national campaign to get Americans vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. At the same time, social media companies like Facebook were facing enormous pressure from the White House to crack down on so-called “misinformation” and more closely monitor vaccine-related content.
A set of documents recently cited and shared by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, “reveal that Facebook bowed to pressure from the White House to remove posts” from the social media platform.
Many Americans were hesitant about getting vaccinated because of information they saw on Facebook, Jordan wrote, citing the US president’s words last July: “They are killing people.”
These criticisms caused Facebook to reevaluate its policies regarding content about Covid-19, to the point that in August it decided to change them.
Previously, a series of messages sent in April 2021 about the procedures to follow in response to concerns about the side effects of the anticovid vaccine appeared in Facebook conversations involving Flaherty, Andy Slavitt, senior White House advisor for the response. to the coronavirus pandemic, and to Meta executives. All of this reveals the pressures from the US Government to control shared content.
How Washington has used its power to shape online discourse to its liking
«My dream for Facebook is for him to play ball. It’s about whether we’re going to get out of this damn mess,” Flaherty said. «I do not doubt that they are sincerely trying to solve this problem in good faith. I doubt they are telling us everything […] We have to explain to the president why there is misinformation on the Internet. We don’t want to be in a position where we eliminate bad news. And if the goal as a company is to make it more likely that people will get vaccinated, let’s just say that people don’t see this one way,” he continued.
After that conversation, Facebook sent a large volume of data to the White House. Later, Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs, sent an email to his team, recapping the phone call he had with Slavitt.
Meta confirmed that the data was collected from CrowdTangle, a tool the company uses to analyze public content on its platform.
On the other hand, the Biden Administration asked Facebook to modify its algorithm to favor certain media outlets, to the detriment of others. With RT
