The Harris-Biden administration’s campaign to censor COVID-related content on Facebook during the height of the pandemic – as revealed by a remorseful Mark Zuckerberg this week – was so aggressive that it even cracked down on lighthearted memes, satirical posts and regular old jokes.
On Monday, Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, “repeatedly pressured” Facebook parent Meta to “censor” pandemic-related content in 2021, as well as The Post’s exclusive reporting on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
The takedown requests included posts that Zuckerberg considered “humor and satire.” While he did not give specifics, some examples were previously detailed in the “Facebook Files” compiled by Jordan and released to the public on X beginning in July 2023.
In April 2021, Facebook president of global affairs Nick Clegg told colleagues that Andy Slavitt, a top Biden adviser on COVID-19 policy was “outraged – not too strong a word to describe his reaction – that we did not remove” a certain top-ranked post related to the vaccines.
The post was a meme shared by Facebook user Timothy McComas, which utilized a popular format depicting actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” pointing at his TV screen with a beer and cigarette in hand.
The meme was captioned: “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear…. ‘Did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled…’”
Clegg said he “countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US.”
Slavitt rejected the argument and claimed the post and others like it “demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst those the Biden Administration is trying to reach.”
In another case, Facebook caved to the White House’s push to censor a Tucker Carlson video related to COVID-19 pandemic by agreeing to limit its reach by 50% — even though the company’s internal review determined the video didn’t violate its policies.
During one April 5, 2021, call with Facebook employees, Courtney Rowe, who was then a top strategic comms adviser to Biden on COVID-19 policy, mocked the ability of Facebook users to separate truth from fiction on the site.
“If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB, it’s the truth,” Rowe said. “What we need is help pushing back on the myths.”
By July 2021, President Biden had publicly blasted Facebook, declaring that the site was “killing people” by not cracking down on alleged COVID-19 “misinformation.”
The White House also wanted Facebook to clamp down on what it described as “vaccine hesitant content,” including “humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn’t safe,” according to one document uncovered by Jordan.
As the pressure mounted, a Facebook vice president in charge of content policy circulated a memo in July 2021 detailing the gap between what the White House wanted suppressed and what the company was comfortable doing.
“The WH has previously indicated that it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects, so we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed,” the VP wrote, according to a document obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
“I can’t see Mark in a million years being comfortable with removing that — and I wouldn’t recommend it,” Clegg responded.
Nevertheless, by August 2021, Facebook brass had agreed to come up with methods “to be more aggressive against Covid and vaccine misinformation.”
“This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the US administration,” one company document said.
In his Monday letter to the committee, Zuckerberg said Meta has since enacted policies to ensure that similar censorship “doesn’t happen again.”
“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he wrote.
The House Judiciary Committee has “deposed some folks from Facebook” while digging into the censorship campaign, Jordan said in an interview with The Post.
“They succumbed to it,” Jordan said. “I think that he clearly points out they regret doing that and they said, in the future, from either side, you know, they’re not going to succumb to government pressure. They’re not going to trust these ‘independent’ fact checkers.”
Facebook also deserves blame for its handling of the situation, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University.
Turley noted the social media giant has fully embraced strict “content moderation” for years – only to reverse course once Congress came knocking.
“Now, Zuckerberg and Meta want people to know that they were ‘pressured’ to censor and really regret their role in silencing opposing voices,” Turley said in a column published by Fox News. “It is the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure.”
The White House defended its actions this week, arguing it “encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”
“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” the White House said.
