A report by Lee Fang, a former journalist for the Intercept, states that the FBI is pressuring Facebook and other social media platforms to censor “disinformation” at the behest of Ukrainian officials — even when the information is not false.
Fang spoke to llia Vitiuk, head of Ukraine’s Department of Cyber Information Security, and reported his comments in an article for his newsletter.
Mark Zuckerberg surrounded by guards ( Chip Somodevilla /Getty)
Via Lee Fang:
“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.
“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.’”
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“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”
The FBI and NGOs staffed by its former officials played a key role in social media censorship during the Trump era, convincing social media platforms to clamp down on “Russian” disinformation networks that were in fact networks of American Trump supporters.
A combination of congressional investigations, lawsuits by red states, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk facilitating the release of the Twitter Files, the FBI and other government agencies have come under intense scrutiny for their role in pushing social media censorship.
Despite this, the vast, well-funded censorship industry that sprang up in the Trump years remains in operation, and continues to push for censorship in a wide variety of areas.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.