Censorship Industrial Complex
Jim Jordan Exposes Biden’s Censorship-Industrial Complex
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By TOM HEBERT
“Internal talking points prepared by Amazon,” says the report, “included the question: ‘Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both).’”
High-ranking Biden White House operatives coerced Big Tech companies into censoring posts critical of the Biden administration or those that spread so-called “misinformation” about COVID-19. A blockbuster new report from the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, exposes how the Biden administration weaponized Big Tech against conservatives.
“The report,” the committee said when it released it, “details the months-long campaign by the Biden White House to coerce large companies, namely Facebook, Google, and Amazon, to censor books, videos, posts, and other content online. By the end of 2021, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon changed their content moderation policies in ways that were directly responsive to criticism from the Biden Administration.”
This report is the result of a multi-year investigation by the Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The evidence, including tens of thousands of emails and other non-public documents, shows a disturbing pattern of Biden officials pressuring Big Tech companies into censoring Americans online.
Shortly after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, then-White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty began haranguing top Facebook officials for more detail on their policies for taking down COVID-19 related posts. “In February 2021,” says the report, “Facebook increased its censorship of anti-vaccine content as well as the lab leak theory of the origin of the virus because of ‘tense conversations with the new [Biden] Administration’ and as part of an effort to be responsive to the Biden White House’s exhortations to ‘do more’ to combat alleged misinformation.”
As 2021 progressed, the White House demanded to know what Facebook was doing to censor “borderline content,” posts that did not violate Facebook’s content moderation policies but were nevertheless objectionable to Biden officials. “Facebook would meet again with the Biden White House on March 12, 2021, to discuss how it was approaching ‘borderline content,’ that is, content that did not violate its policies,” says the report.
“Facebook walked through its policies and enforcement practices for violative and borderline content,” it says. “But call notes reveal that throughout the meeting, Flaherty continued to ask about the removal and reduction of content above all else.”
Unsatisfied with Facebook’s unwillingness to “play ball,” Flaherty and the White House played hard ball. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Biden: “On Covid misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?” Biden responded: “They’re killing people.”
In response to the intense pressure from the White House, Facebook went on to change their content moderation policies and censored posts about vaccine hesitancy and the lab-leak theory.
Facebook was not the only social media platform that Biden officials pressured. In April 2021, Flaherty reached out to YouTube with a litany of questions about YouTube’s efforts to censor borderline content. “Flaherty’s email was particularly focused on how YouTube handled non-violative ‘borderline’ content,” says the report. “These requests were prefaced by stating the Biden White House wanted ‘to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better’ and that this ‘is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) level of the [White House].’”
After Flaherty succeeded in making YouTube change its content moderation policies “to remove content that questioned the safety or efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,” other Biden bureaucrats started to pester YouTube employees to clamp down on other content. In March 2022, according to the committee report, former Biden advisor Tim Wu asked for a meeting with Google employees to discuss “Russian misinformation/disinformation” and “airline competition.”
Another staffer communicated with YouTube about abortion-related content. “On July 14, 2022, YouTube Government Affairs staff contacted White House personnel to brief them on ‘updates related to addressing reproductive health misinformation on YouTube,’ to which White House staff responded, saying that they were ‘specifically interested in abortion,’” said the report.
Biden officials clearly sought to censor content they perceived as politically damaging to Biden.
The report also shows the White House’s obsession suppressing books that they disagreed with. In March 2021, the Biden White House emailed an Amazon executive “asking to have a discussion regarding the ‘high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation at Amazon.’”
“Internal talking points prepared by Amazon,” says the report, “included the question: ‘Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both).’”
There are two important takeaways from this report.
One, the Biden administration sought to impose a censorship regime through Big Tech to benefit the president politically.
Two, Congress should act to prevent future government-directed censorship of American speech. There are numerous bills that would address this problem. The House passed the “Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act” last year, legislation that would ban bureaucrats from advocating for censorship of viewpoints. The “Free Speech Protection Act” imposes penalties on bureaucrats who censor speech, and the “Censorship Accountability Act” would allow Americans to sue bureaucrats who violate their First Amendment rights.
The Biden administration has displayed an appalling amount of contempt for American free speech. Exposing Biden’s censorship-industrial complex is an important first step toward ensuring that unelected bureaucrats do not have a veto over what we say online.
Tom Hebert is Director of Competition and Regulatory Policy at Americans for Tax Reform and executive director of the Open Competition Center.
Censorship Industrial Complex
Global media alliance colluded with foreign nations to crush free speech in America: House report
From LifeSiteNews
By Dan Frieth
The now-defunct ad coalition GARM shared insider data and urged boycotts of Twitter to punish non-compliance with its ‘harmful content’ standards, a US House Judiciary report shows.
A new report from the U.S. House Judiciary Committee has shed light on what it describes as an alarming collaboration between powerful corporations and foreign governments aimed at suppressing lawful American speech.
The investigation focuses on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an initiative founded in 2019 by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which the committee accuses of acting as a censorship cartel.
According to the report, GARM, whose members control about 90 percent of global advertising spending, exploited its market dominance to pressure platforms like Twitter (now X) into compliance with its restrictive content policies.
A copy of the report can be found HERE.
The committee highlighted how GARM sought to “effectively reduce the availability and monetization” of content it deemed harmful, regardless of public demand for free expression.
Documents obtained by the committee reveal direct coordination between GARM and foreign regulators, including the European Commission and Australia’s eSafety commissioner.
In one exchange, a European bureaucrat encouraged advertisers to leverage their influence to “push Twitter to deliver on GARM asks.”
Similarly, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant praised GARM’s “significant collective power in helping to hold the platforms to account” and sought updates to “take into account in our engagement and regulatory decisions.”
Robert Rakowitz, GARM’s co-founder and initiative lead, expressed a chilling goal in private correspondence, stating that silencing President Donald Trump was his “main thing” and likening the president’s speech to a “contagion” he aimed to contain “to protect infection overall.”
The report outlines how GARM distributed previously unavailable non-public information about Twitter’s adherence to its standards, fully aware this would prompt advertisers to boycott the platform if it failed to conform. According to the House report, Rakowitz admitted that this information sharing was designed to encourage members not to advertise on Twitter.
He went as far as to draft statements urging GARM members to halt advertising on the platform, telling colleagues he had gone “as close as possible” to saying Twitter “is unsafe, cease and desist.”
Despite the widespread impact of GARM’s actions, including what the committee describes as coerced “concessions” from platforms, internal polling circulated within GARM showed that “66 percent of American consumers valued free expression over protection from harmful content.”
Still, GARM pressed ahead with efforts to “eliminate all categories of harmful content in the fastest possible timing,” ignoring consumer preferences.
Even after GARM dissolved in 2024 amid legal challenges, similar efforts persisted.
A new coalition led by Dentsu and The 614 Group briefly attempted to revive GARM’s mission before disbanding under scrutiny. Gerry D’Angelo, a former GARM leader, reflected on the initiative’s overreach, stating, “Did we go too far in those first rounds of exclusionary restrictions? I would say yes.”
The Judiciary Committee warns that despite GARM’s downfall, the threat of collusion to stifle free expression remains.
It pledged to continue oversight to defend “the fundamental principles” of the Constitution and ensure that markets, not coordinated censorship efforts, shape the flow of information in the digital age.
Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.
Censorship Industrial Complex
FBI urged to release withheld records on Hunter Biden laptop, other ‘Twitter Files’
From LifeSiteNews
By Dan Frieth
Judicial Watch initiated the lawsuit in April 2023, targeting the DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
A hearing took place Wednesday, before U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch against the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The case seeks records related to the “Twitter Files,” particularly those involving Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations of censorship.
The only matter still pending is the FBI’s withholding of records detailing two meetings between agency officials and Twitter representatives from the Biden administration.
Judicial Watch initiated the lawsuit in April 2023, targeting the DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The legal action followed the FBI’s failure to respond to a December 2022 FOIA request for communications between FBI personnel and key Twitter figures, including Yoel Roth, Vijaya Gadde, and Jim Baker, from June 2020 to December 2022.
These individuals were involved in discussions about suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, as disclosed in journalist Matt Taibbi’s December 2022 “Twitter Files.”
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, expressed strong disappointment: “It is frustrating beyond belief for Judicial Watch to have to go to federal court for basic information on Biden’s abuse of the FBI, using Twitter to censor and monitor Americans.”
Through a mix of FOIA requests and legal action, Judicial Watch continues to document extensive censorship efforts that affected tens of millions of Americans.
In November 2024, it obtained DHS records showing a widespread campaign, by both government and private groups, to police and suppress social media posts concerning election fraud in 2020.
Additional records from June 2024, released through Judicial Watch litigation, revealed that just before and after the 2020 election, state officials flagged alleged misinformation and sent it to entities like the Center for Internet Security, CISA, and the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a DHS-backed nonprofit known for targeting online election discourse.
In December 2023, DHS documents exposed coordination between CISA and the EIP to conduct “real-time narrative tracking” on major social media platforms in the run-up to the 2020 vote.
Similar records surfaced in November 2023, showing EIP’s influence over platforms such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit to suppress “disinformation.”
Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.
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