The latest Facebook Files from Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan reveals that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to suppress Daily Wire and Tomi Lahren content to control the COVID narrative.
It started small. After all, you cannot just go all in. You have to carve a path and break them down to the point where they think everything you demand is totally cool and acceptable.
First step: Rob Flaherty, President Biden’s then-Director of Digital Strategy, asked Facebook to explain why it allowed certain content. Why would Facebook allow The New York Post to share so many articles? How dare they.
“NY Post churning out articles every day about people dying. What is supposed to happen to that from Policy perspective. Dies that article get a reduction, labels?”
So it doesn’t matter if the article is true.
Second step: Flaherty suggested Facebook kick people off the platform because that’s what he would do. How could Facebook possibly not agree with him?
“My question on inform – intellectually my bias is to kick people off. Inform, intellectually, maybe path of most impact.”
Third step: Flaherty piled on the flattery! “My dream for FB [is] to play ball.”
Fourth step: Demand without making a demand. As he did above, Flaherty disguises the demand as a “suggestion.” He wanted Facebook to change the algorithm to show fewer posts from The Daily Wire and Tomi Lahren. How dare they show up with the NYT and WSJ.
“If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see NYT, WSJ, any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?”
Fifth step: Remind Facebook that rural towns have only stupid residents. Thanks a lot, Courtney Rowe. She worked as Biden’s head of strategic communications and public engagement for the #COVID19 response.
“Love that broken down by region and demographics. But equally important, how do we work with you all to push back on it. If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB, it’s the truth.”
Sixth step: More pressure. Facebook isn’t doing enough.
“That’s why from product perspective, it’s so important to look at mechanisms – if we can’t remove it, at least we need to contain it.”
We have to contain it! Yes, Flaherty, we must listen to Our Betters and stop bad information. You know better.
“We’re keen on what platforms are doing to reduce the spread of bad information, that platforms are not funneling people towards bad content. That’s our primary concern.”
Facebook caved because, of course, they did. It only wanted to promote positive content.
It didn’t matter if the “negative” post about COVID vaccines contained the truth. It didn’t have a positive attitude about the vaccines, so it must go away.
“And we attack virality aspect through feed demotions. We remove content that can lead to imminent physical harm. For content that doesn’t meet that threshold, we instituted borderline demotions. For example, someone sharing negative side effect posts. Similarly, posts questioning whether you should get a vaccine under a mandate, whether it’s government overreach. We demote those. That’s not false information, but it leads to a vaccine negative environment. When it comes to looking at COVID misinformation, it’s a different approach. What we normally do is just remove or leave to fact checkers. Here, we introduced a middle ground.”
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