This demand came after Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in a 6-3 decision against the GOP attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who had accused the White House of colluding with social media companies to suppress free speech.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-SC, who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on cybersecurity, wrote a letter stating, “In the interest of good government, and to ensure the integrity of the upcoming national election, I am writing to request information on any information suppression campaigns in which the Administration is currently engaged. I urge you to cease and desist any such activity and ensure that all employees of the Executive Branch refrain from exerting political pressure on social media companies to censor content in accord with White House preferences.”
Noting the Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden laptop case, which both Zuckerberg and former Twitter executives confirmed the platforms censored the New York Post’s story ahead of the 2020 election, had directly impacted voting results, she said that the nation cannot repeat the same scenerio after 4 years.
“From the outset, your Administration has advertised its willingness to manipulate the content of social media sites. On July 5, 2021, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated at a press briefing that the Administration was ‘flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,’ and the next day clarified that the White House was in regular contact with social media companies to raise concerns about certain types of information on their platforms. The White House has not apologized for this activity or indicated that it would cease and desist from engaging in such behavior,” she said in a letter.
The letter also noted that the White House has not apologized for this activity or indicated that it would cease and desist from engaging in such behavior.
“Troubling revelations of how Facebook and Google sites responded to users seeking information on the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt of President Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania prompted committee Chairman James Comer to write these companies on August 14, 2024 to better understand how and why both companies chose to limit visibility of information about the attempt on the President’s life,” the letter reads.
Source : Times of India
