Source: ZeroHedge.com
On Wednesday, America First Legal (AFL) revealed documents that shed new light on the collaborative efforts between Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic used to censor free speech.
The documents, obtained through litigation against the CDC, expose detailed onboarding materials used to train CDC employees on a specially designed Facebook portal aimed at curbing what they labeled “Covid & Vaccine Misinformation.”
Via AFL:
These documents reveal how Facebook, on the heels of extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House (including from Rob Flaherty, a current senior Harris Campaign staffer) to remove specific posts, responded:
- Facebook created a new “end-to-end workflow” so that government officials could submit links for removal from Facebook;
- Facebook only gave access to the portal to approved government and law enforcement personnel;
- The new portal dramatically increased the efficiency of the censorship machine by allowing up to twenty links at a time to be referred for censoring;
- By moving from email chains to a Facebook-hosted portal, the new system also made it harder for organizations like AFL to provide oversight to individual censorship requests;
- Each censorship request automatically generated a ticket number so that the government could track if Facebook complied with its censorship demands;
- The documents further show how Facebook explained precisely what content it would remove and what it needed from the CDC in order to censor certain narratives within the bounds of its “community standards.”
The documents also highlight the United Kingdom’s role in shaping the Biden-Harris Administration’s approach to online censorship. Additionally, Mark Zuckerberg’s admission that Facebook only engaged in censorship after extreme pressure from the Biden-Harris White House underscores the external pressures leading to Facebook’s mass censorship.
More via AFL:
Part A: Censorship Made Easy
The documents expose an onboarding presentation given by Facebook employees to CDC staff on May 19, 2021. Facebook trained CDC staff on how to use the platform’s “Government Reporting System.” This came in response to profanity-laden demands from senior Biden–Harris White House officials exposed by the House Judiciary Committee. As their “End-to-end workflow” described, if “Government requests,” then “Facebook processes.”…