Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and James Comer, R-Ky., wrote a letter this week to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, seeking an explanation about whether Dr. Anthony Fauci influenced the platform’s decisions about censoring coronavirus-related content.
Newly released emails show that Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, communicated directly with Zuckerberg.
“Facebook’s censorship decisions did not occur in a vacuum, and there are indications that Facebook may have made content-moderation decisions regarding COVID-19 at the behest of certain government policies and positions,” wrote Jordan and Comer. “The federal government appears to have had significant contact with Facebook about COVID-19 during the pandemic.”
Jordan is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer is the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The congressmen said the federal government may have violated the First Amendment by colluding with the Big Tech company about censorship decisions.
“You emailed personally with Dr. Fauci to enlist him in Facebook’s ‘Coronavirus Information Hub’ and encouraged him to provide a video ‘because people trust and want to hear from experts rather than just a bunch of agencies and political leaders,” Jordan and Comer wrote.
In the letter, Jordan and Comer asked Facebook for documents and communications between Facebook’s staff and federal health bureaucrats so that they can determine the existence and extent of government-sponsored censorship.
Facebook has blocked content about the coronavirus, including information about life-saving therapeutic treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and about common supplements like zinc and vitamin D3, which improve COVID-19 outcomes.
The platform censored peaceful groups that oppose tyrannical mask mandates, house-arrest orders, and forced business closures.
“Your appeal to Dr. Fauci to serve as an ‘expert’ voice of Facebook’s platform suggests that the government’s views may have directly guided and led to Facebook’s approach to content moderation,” the congressmen wrote. “This conclusion is bolstered by the circumstances of Facebook’s recent change in its content moderation approach relating to COVID-19’s origins.”
Facebook had censored information about COVID-19’s potential origin at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Shortly after President Biden announced that he had directed the intelligence community to investigate the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook announced that it would no longer censor certain content that effectively includes whether the pandemic originated in a Wuhan lab,” Jordan and Comer wrote.
“It appears possible that Facebook’s altered approach to content moderation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, after ‘consultation with public health experts,’ could have been driven or strongly encouraged by U.S. official,” they wrote.
