FaceBook Objected to Biden's Demands for Censorship, But Censored Vax Skeptics Anyway, Because They Need the Government's Help in Protecting Their Consumer Spying Operations in Europe

FaceBook's whole business model is "data-mining" their customers and then selling that data to advertisers.

Europe has been attempting to ban the process.

FaceBook has long supported leftwing Democrats, both with direct donations and $350 million+ investments in ballot harvesting and GOTV efforts in Democrat districts. And they were now calling on the Democrats they lease-with-an-option-to-buy to defend them against Europe's attempts to bring the FaceBook data-mining operations to heel.

When Joe Biden demanded that FaceBook censor people talking about their covid vax injuries, FaceBook objected, pointing out that attempting to censor such stories would just bring more attention to them. (They don't seem to have objected on principle, just that the censorship would not be a productive way to achieve Regime goals.)

However, they censored this material anyway. Internal emails show that FaceBook said they had more important matters at stake, specifically "data flows."

What did they mean by that? They meant they had to appease the Biden Administration so that the Biden Administration would protect their data-mining operations around the world. These are the "data flows" they meant -- the data flowing from FaceBook users to FaceBook and then to advertisers.

And David French continues insisting that Biden is merely "jawboning" social media companies to censor conservatives and other dissenters, and has every constitutional right to do so.

The indispensable Michael Shellenberger:

The Biden White House did not violate the First Amendment when it requested that Facebook censor information on Covid's origin and vaccine side effects, say many policymakers, journalists, and legal experts. Rather, White House officials were simply expressing their free speech rights, and Facebook executives were free to ignore White House requests.

But newly released internal emails show that Facebook executives felt pressure to comply with White House demands in order to resolve a European Union ban on the social media company's ability to transfer the data of European users to its servers in the United States.

In July 2021, after a White House official demanded that Facebook censor more information, Facebook's Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications, Nick Clegg, asked his colleagues to comply. The reason? Because of "the bigger fish we have to fry with the Administration -- data flows etc..."

By "data flows," Clegg was referring to the EU's demand that Facebook stop transferring European user data -- which Facebook advertisers value for targeting customers -- to the United States.

The dispute was no small matter. In May of this year, EU regulators fined Meta, Facebook's parent company, a record $1.3 billion for breaking the EU's privacy regulations. The regulator said that Meta had violated a 2020 ruling by the EU's highest court.

Two months later, on July 10, 2023, the Biden Administration and European Union announced a deal, the "EU-US Data Privacy Framework."

The series of events suggests a quid pro quo. Facebook would bow to White House requests for censorship in exchange for its help with the European Union.

"This is a gross violation of the First Amendment," Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger told Public, "not only because it involves what the Supreme Court considers 'coercion,' but also because it's equally unconstitutional for the government to seek censorship through contract or conspiracy. And that's what happened here."

The White House wasn't the only entity demanding that Facebook censor. NGOs and journalists from NBC and the New York Times were also pressuring Facebook to censor more. In response, Facebook executives weighed the radical "blackholing" measure, which blocks links to external web sites without informing users.

But it's clear from the newly released emails that Facebook executives felt the greatest pressure from the White House and that they feared the White House would hurt them in other ways.

Until now, critics of government demands for greater Facebook censorship have focused on the White House's threat to revoke Facebook's Section 230 status, which immunizes the company from many forms of liability.

But the new emails point to a form of government leverage over the platform that has been ignored until now: the EU demand on Facebook to stop data flows from the EU to the US, and the conditional willingness of the White House to push back against it.

This is the final proof needed to establish that FaceBook was acting as an agent of the United States in censoring the Regime's enemies. There wasn't merely the threat of stripping their s.230 protection. (Or the threat, which I always mention, that the government will stop protecting these illegal monopolies and tart prosecuting them.)

There was also a direct bribe, a straight payoff: Censor for us and we'll fight for your right to mine the personal information of your users for advertising use.

FaceBook straight-up makes that connection themselves: "we have bigger fish to fry with the [Biden] Administration... data flows..."

They admit in their internal emails that they didn't want to buck the Biden Administration on censorship because they needed their help in protecting their core business of selling user information.

And David French continues babbling that this is just a case of the US government asking a completely-independent third party to please ban some "disinformation"...

And so, frankly, does the treasonous, vile corporate wing of the GOP.

Also very important: It was the criminal news media which was demanding the White House in turn apply pressure on social media companies to censor conservatives and vaccine dissidents.

I've long pointed out that CNN and NBC, in particular, maintain what I call "Deplatforming Officers." It is the job of the arrogant, face-missing-a-fist fascist Ben Collins at NBC to make demands that more and more Americans be censored and silenced. It was the job of Brian Stelter to do that at CNN; now the job is wholly in control of his former Junior Deplatforming Officer, Oliver Darcy.

They have no other job. Their jobs consist of finding people that liberals want to #Cancel and then using all the power of billion-dollar media companies to pressure social media platforms to cancel them.

[W]hy was the Biden White House so determined to censor Facebook in the first place?

Until the Facebook Files, the answer had been that they wanted people to take the vaccine. The White House believed all the anti-vaccine information on Facebook was contributing to "vaccine hesitancy."

But now, the Facebook Files reveal that Facebook executives knew censoring disfavored vaccine views would backfire and explained to White House officials that censoring such views would violate established norms around freedom of speech. But the White House demanded more censorship, anyway.

...

"We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the white house and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine-discouraging content," [FaceBook employee] Birch wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg in an April 2021 email.

Facebook executive Nick Clegg initially attempted to defend his staff. "I countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US," wrote Clegg.

Clegg wrote that given what is at stake -- which we can assume included those precious "data flows" -- it was critical that FaceBook bow to the Biden Administration's demands.

But he eventually caved in. "Given what is at stake here," he wrote, "it would also be a good idea if we could regroup to take stock of where we are in our relations with the WH [White House], and our internal methods too."

The gross and ancient toad Taylor Lorenz also spends a lot of her time dialing up social media companies' officers and demanding the censor her enemies.

posted by Ace at 05:21 PM

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