As the days go on, new pieces of evidence continue to reveal that the United States government and big tech are conspiring to censor their political opposition.
Now, a group of documents received in part via a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has provided further proof that the US government is quietly expanding its power to censor speech it deems dangerous.
Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), for instance, set up “a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on … and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use.”
As noted by the Federalist, tech giants ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn, Discord to Verizon Media, routinely met with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and others in the U.S. government to discuss dealing with what they identify as ‘election misinformation.’
It goes deeper than most Americans realize. Take the tale of Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, trust, and safety, Vijaya Gadde. The now-fired and then-Twitter executive reportedly worked on government advisory committees and drafted a report for a DHS sub-agency that urging it to exercise more power to mold the “information ecosystem.”
Gadde specified that online speech should especially be controlled as it pertains to “key democratic institutions, such as the courts, or by other sectors such as the financial system, or public health measures.”
Does anybody else remember when big tech companies like Facebook censored Americans for the crime of pointing out that Covid-19 likely came out of a lab for over a year?
Such collusion between the federal government and big tech comes as no surprise; it was almost two years ago when former First Lady Michelle Obama specifically called on Silicon Valley to ban former President Donald Trump from their social media platforms for life.
“Now is the time for companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” Obama posted in January of 2021.
Like all of you, I’ve been feeling so many emotions since yesterday. I tried to put my thoughts down here: pic.twitter.com/9xzRvrpk7y
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 7, 2021
Despite the United States government often attempting to hide such behavior, its representatives are at times open about their practices of censorship. It was in July of 2021 when former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki openly admitted that large social media companies take counsel from the government when determining which content is “problematic” or a product of “misinformation” and the ensuing consequences.
“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s Office,” Psaki said at the time. “We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
