Robby Soave drops Facebook Files, detailing federal gov't 'jawboning' to censor inconvenient content

Chances are pretty good that by this point, you’ve read through at least a couple of the extensive threads and articles known as The Twitter Files, and you’ve seen the disturbing lengths to which Democrats and the federal government have gone — with varying degrees of cooperation from Twitter execs and middle management — to suppress information and push false narratives and silence debate.

And you may have gotten the sneaking suspicion that, given just how damning and disturbing these revelations were, it was entirely possible that the suppression of information and pushing of false narratives and silencing of debate weren’t just issues at Twitter. And you’d evidently be right.

Today, Reason’s Robby Soave has a new exposé to share, and this one is all about censorship at Facebook and Instagram, carried out at the behest of the federal government, including the Centers for Disease Control. And, as was the case with The Twitter Files, you’ll want to take the time to read this one:

1. THREAD: THE FACEBOOK FILES
Twitter is not the only social media site to face pressure to censor content. I obtained emails showing that the CDC had significant influence over covid moderation at Facebook and Instagram. Here’s what I found.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

2. The CDC had significant input on pandemic-era policies at Meta. The CDC was consulted frequently, at times daily, receiving constant updates about which topics were trending, and giving recommendations on what content to flag as false or misleading. https://t.co/rEXxY1VDk3

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

3. For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate. pic.twitter.com/0QDrxXG7iE

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

10. Meta gave the CDC de facto power to police COVID misinfo on the platforms; the CDC took the position that essentially any erroneous claim could contribute to vaccine hesitancy and cause social harm. This was a recipe for vast silencing, at the feds’ implicit behest.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

11. Meta also kept the CDC apprised of criticism of Anthony Fauci. One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was "very helpful." pic.twitter.com/CUM5wwORtM

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

Good Lord.

And it gets messier still:

12. The CDC was not the only arm of the federal government engaged in this work, of course: White House staffers castigated Meta for not deplatforming alleged misinformation fast enough. President Joe Biden himself accused Facebook of "killing people" in July 2021.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

13. "What's at stake is the future of free speech in the technological age," @JeninYounesEsq, an attorney for @NCLAlegal, tells me. "We've never had a situation where the federal government at very high levels is coordinating or coercing social media to do its bidding…"

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

14. The New Civil Liberties Alliance is helping the state of Missouri sue the government over its campaign to pressure social media companies to silence dissent.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

15. The theory is that the combination of direct influence and pressure from government officials, in conjunction with explicit threats from politicians, illegal violates free speech rights.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

16. There is a word for government officials using the threat of punishment to extort desired behaviors from private actors. That word is: jawboning.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

17. "Multiple arms of the administration delivered the jawboning effort together,"says @Will_Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. "Each one component wouldn't rise to something legally actionable, but when taken as a whole administration push, it might."

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

18. I explore the legal case that the federal government’s jawboning of social media companies violates the First Amendment in my cover story for the March 2023 issue of @reason magazine. Read it here https://t.co/rEXxY1VDk3

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

19. For a closer look at the emails themselves, read this article. https://t.co/TcZKp5jUd7

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

20. I'm grateful to the work done by @mtaibbi, @bariweiss, @lhfang, @ShellenbergerMD, @davidzweig and others (with @elonmusk's cooperation) to uncover censorship at Twitter. It's clear the same forces were conspiring to silence dissent at Meta as well.

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) January 19, 2023

And there we have it. How many Twitter users were laughed at or denounced as conspiracy theorists for suspecting that censorship was at play? They turned out to be right. And now we have compelling evidence that Facebook did the exact same thing. It’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s reality.

I'm going to keep floating this because…I am starting to believe it.

But I am pretty sure I got booted from Facebook for something along these lines. https://t.co/EGVZNuW8ql

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 19, 2023

There are many here that follow me there…and I almost never talked politics. That was my safe space.

I did talk COVID, especially when people asked me questions.

I never thought I'd get booted over talking medical stuff, but the more emails I see here about this stuff…?

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 19, 2023

And this shows the creeping danger of authoritarian speech controls. If people can't talk openly to physicians about questions about COVID without threat of censorship, on a place like Facebook, then we have crossed the Rubicon.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 19, 2023

I would love for the GOP and @SpeakerMcCarthy to have @CDCDirector and others testify to this. I want to see them confronted with these emails, and then defend their behavior.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 19, 2023

This isn't all about punishment, etc. But it IS about accountability.

The Biden admin must be held to account for these censorship efforts. They clear and openly were trying to censor speech they found politically inconvenient.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 19, 2023

Anyone else get the feeling that all the revelations are just barely scratching the surface of what went on between the Biden administration and Twitter and Facebook?

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