UPDATE 7/16/21 3:00 PM: White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Friday said Americans who deliver “misinformation” on social media should be banned from all such platforms. That followed her revelation on Thursday that the White House worked with Facebook to track down and eliminate “problematic” posts that the administration disagrees with.
Psaki says that if you provide “misinformation” then you should not just be banned from ONE platform, you should be banned from others. pic.twitter.com/oBRDAzf2oe
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 16, 2021
“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others if you providing ‘misinformation’ out there,” she said on Friday.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted this week that the Biden administration is working with Facebook to “flag problematic” posts that “spread disinformation” about the coronavirus pandemic.
During a press conference on Thursday, Psaki confirmed that President Joe Biden wants Big Tech to be more “aggressive” when policing “misinformation.”
The White House is “in regular touch with social media platforms” to handle it, she added.
“Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we’re flagging posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” Psaki explained. “We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts with people, who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content. So, we’re helping get trusted content out there. We also created the COVID Community Corps to get factual information into the hands of local messengers.”
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy confirmed that he regularly communicates with Big Tech to make sure the social media platforms “consistently take action against misinformation superspreaders.”
He also demanded that news organizations “proactively address the public’s questions without inadvertently giving a platform to health misinformation that can harm their audiences.”
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald slammed Psaki’s admission as “deeply disturbing.”
The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as “problematic” so that Facebook can remove them.
This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks of fascism — that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support. https://t.co/U2Ee3DgXJe
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 15, 2021
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., agreed and blasted the White House for “coordinating” with Big Tech to censor Americans.
“I think it’s really scary to have the federal government of the United States, the White House, compiling lists of people, organizations, whatever, and then going to a private company that, by the way, is a monopoly, Facebook, and saying, ‘You need to censor. You need to do something about this. You need to tell these users, these private users on a private company what they can or cannot say,’” Hawley told Fox News on Thursday.
“I mean, I just think this kind of coordination between Big Government and the big monopoly corporation, boy, that is scary stuff and it really is censorship,” he added.
