Internal communications from Facebook obtained by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) show that the tech giant was well aware that the data behind the Biden White House’s “disinformation dozen,” which originated with a shadowy British “anti-hate” NGO, was false — yet the company bowed to the pressure anyway, censoring the targeted accounts.
The internal communications were obtained through the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into collusion between the Biden White House, foreign NGOs, and Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook.
U.S. President Joe Biden (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Robert Kennedy Jr. (R), 2024 Presidential hopeful, is sworn in before testifying at the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 20, 2023. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Facebook has been less than cooperative in its interactions with the committee, failing to turn over critical documents until Rep. Jordan threatened Mark Zuckerberg with congressional censure. With little option but to obey, disclosures from Facebook are at last starting to flow.
The latest round of Rep. Jordan’s Facebook Files shows that a key claim used by the Biden administration to pressure Facebook to censor American citizens, the allegation that 65 percent of all “anti-vaccine content” could be traced to a “disinformation dozen” of just 12 accounts, was completely inaccurate.
According to the internal messages, top Facebook officials were aware that even by the tech platforms strict rules on vaccine misinformation, the actual amount that the accounts were responsible for was closer to 0.05 percent.
Facebook was stunned that the Biden White House seemed to actually believe the CCDH’s obviously false stat and was relying on these foreign activists’ “data” to “guide major governmental policy decisions.” pic.twitter.com/HY4LZD7U8j
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 5, 2023
Facebook was not opposed to the idea of censoring vaccine misinformation. “If this were true, I would also want us to do this,” said one Facebook official with regards to censoring the twelve accounts, which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Joe Biden’s top opponent in the Democrat primary.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” the executive continued.
The Biden White House’s censorship demands didn’t stop there.
They also wanted Facebook to remove all URL links to off-platform websites, which would “remove significant amounts of benign content posted by regular users, such as . . . person experiences or government criticism.” pic.twitter.com/CXYylY8KqQ
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 5, 2023
In addition to banning and suppressing the reach of accounts the Biden White House also wanted Facebook to censor links to offsite websites that were “associated with covid misinfo violators,” even if the posts and links had nothing to do with COVID or vaccines.
By August, things hadn’t improved.
CCDH’s false Disinfo Dozen stat was “routinely cited in the press” and contributed to FB having a “tough relationship with” the Biden White House.
So Facebook “tailored” solutions around the White House’s concerns rather than real problems. pic.twitter.com/hG8ZDOrlfe
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 5, 2023
Despite its knowledge that the 65 percent statistic was false, and despite publishing its own data demonstrating, the media and the Biden administration continued to quote the misleading number. One Facebook employee remarked that the White House had ensured the “disinformation dozen” claim — which they knew to be actual misinformation — had “unrelenting staying power” in the media.
Even though the whole campaign was grounded in misinformation, Facebook caved in to political and media pressure. It censored the so-called disinformation dozen, actions which included a ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Instagram account. The ban was not lifted until earlier this summer.
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. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.