Thanks to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, Facebook is turning over COVID-19-related documents from 2021 that confirm communication and coordination between the White House and Facebook executives.
The now-public documents are being called the “Facebook Files” by some after the similar-named “Twitter files” were released by Elon Musk that confirmed backroom censorship by the federal government and now-fired Twitter executives. In one “Facebook File” phone call, a White House official requested special access to Facebook users on the premise of warning them about misinformation, according to a Fox News story.
"Since it’s a global pandemic,” asked Rob Flaherty, the White House digital director, “can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they normally wouldn’t be able to?"
Flaherty’s request stemmed from a discussion over how Facebook should address side effects from the controversial COVID-19 shot, such as a nose bleed, if a Facebook user raises that concern online.
To their credit, one Facebook official raised the concern over privacy – the “Big Brother feel” – but the White House official didn’t seem persuaded.
“If people are having that conversation,” Flaherty pressed, “is the presumption that we let people have it?”
A second Facebook employee then suggested a delay so the Facebook user would not be as alarmed.
Curtis Houck of Media Research Center says the “Facebook files” confirm some of the worst fears of the American public.
“The American people had this feeling, this sneaking suspicion,” he says, “that there was something wrong, that there was censorship taking place.”
Even though the “Facebook files” are similar to Twitter’s documents, the influence of Facebook is on a separate, eye-popping scale: An estimated 240 million Americans, or about 70% of the population, have a Facebook account.
Twitter, by comparison, currently has about 77 million users in the U.S.
Citing the influence of social media and the blatant censorship by our government, Houck coldly predicts more Big Brother-like behavior when the next emergency comes, but he wonders if the public will know what our government is doing.
"It's scary to think about whether they would be more nimble [or] whether they would be more blatant about it," he observes. "Would they be more subtle about the actions that they take? I mean, you just don't know."
