(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, released another batch of “Facebook Files” Thursday, showing more White House censorship efforts of social media content—including efforts by Biden officials to control Facebook’s algorithm.
Similar to the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files are a trove of internal company documents about the company’s content moderation decisions. Elon Musk released the Twitter Files, while the Facebook records were obtained by Jordan via congressional subpoena.
Jordan released the first two sets of Facebook Files last week, which included smoking-gun evidence that the Biden administration pressured the company to censor content—and that in some cases, Facebook caved to the pressure.
On the occasions when Facebook declined to censor on behalf of government, White House officials then requested the company to adjust its algorithm to hide content, according to Jordan’s third set of Facebook Files.
For example, in an April 14, 2021, email, Biden’s then-director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, asked Facebook if it could reamplify sites such as the Daily Wire in favor of the New York Times.
“If you were to change the algorithm so that people were more likely to see NYT, WSJ—any authoritative news source over Daily Wire, Tomi Lahren, polarizing people. You wouldn’t have a mechanism to check the material impact?” Flaherty asked.
It’s not clear how Facebook responded to the White House demand specifically as it pertains to the abovementioned conservative media, as Jordan only released select email excerpts.
But in a July 2021 email, Facebook did confirm that it reamplifies content that’s skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Posts questioning whether you should get a vaccine under a mandate, whether it’s government overreach—we demote those,” the email states. “That’s not false information, but it leads to a vaccine negative environment.”
Jordan said more Facebook Files will be released at a later date. His committee still has a subpoena against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for censorship records, including records from his new Twitter-like social media platform, Threads.
Jordan has threatened to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t continue to comply with the subpoena.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
