The House Judiciary Committee has indefinitely suspended its efforts to advance contempt of Congress proceedings against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the tech giant released documents to the panel detailing collusion between Facebook and the White House.
The documents were handed over to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) just hours before the panel was set to vote on contempt of Congress charges for the social media company and its founder, Mr. Zuckerberg.
After he purchased Twitter for $44 billion last year, Mr. Musk coordinated with journalists to release a litany of files, dubbed the Twitter files, discovered during an investigation of previous management. These showed that the company had been in communication with sources as diverse as the White House, the FBI, and governmental actors in Ukraine. Often, these groups would request the removal of viewpoints that went outside of official narratives, and in many cases, Twitter leadership acquiesced.
Now, Mr. Jordan has said that Republicans have received a new batch of “smoking gun” files from Meta that prove that Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta, censored Americans because of pressure from President Joe Biden’s White House. The documents also implicate others, including the office of the surgeon general, in the information suppression push.
“Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House,” Mr. Jordan wrote on Twitter.
He reported a summary of the files, saying that they showed that Facebook experienced “tremendous pressure” in the first half of 2021—mere months after Mr. Biden took office—to remove content the administration deemed anti-vaccine.
“These documents, AND OTHERS that were just produced to the Committee, prove that the Biden Admin abused its powers to coerce Facebook into censoring Americans, preventing free and open discourse on issues of critical public importance,” Mr. Jordan wrote.
In an email circulated in April 2021, Mr. Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg reported that they were “facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House” to remove posts.
That same month, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, told his team that he was informed during an hour-long call with Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to Mr. Biden, of “some pretty serious—and sensitive” issues that Mr. Clegg and others “need to address.”
For example, Mr. Slavitt reported to Mr. Clegg that there was a consensus among “misinfo researchers” that Facebook is a “disinformation factory.” It isn’t clear which researchers or group made the declaration. The same researchers, Mr. Slavitt said, had applauded YouTube for its removal policy regarding vaccine content but said Facebook had “lagged behind.”
White House Demands Meme Removal
Mr. Clegg reported that Mr. Slavitt was “outraged—not too strong a word to describe his reaction,” that Facebook hadn’t removed a highly rated post about vaccines that had received a great deal of attention.Specifically, the files show that Mr. Slavitt and the White House had such a strong reaction to an internet meme reading, “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear ‘Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled to—”
The meme was a reference to well-known television ads related to asbestos exposure and other materials later deemed to cause substantial harm to health and well-being.
Mr. Clegg wrote in the email to his team at Facebook that he had countered Mr. Slavitt’s request with First Amendment concerns.
“I countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the U.S.,” he wrote. “But [Mr. Slavitt] replied that the post was directly comparing COVID vaccines to asbestos poisoning in a way which demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst those the Biden Administration is trying to reach.”
Later, Brian Rice, Facebook’s vice president of public policy, wrote in an email that Mr. Slavitt’s demand felt “like a crossroads ... with the White House in these early days.”
Tucker Carlson Demoted at White House Request
In another case, Facebook demoted the reach of a post by Tucker Carlson, at the time the No. 1-rated cable television personality, at the White House’s request—despite that his post didn’t formally violate any rules.In a list of talking points to appease the White House if questions were raised about the video, Mr. Clegg was advised of the proper response to a question along the lines of “How was this [Tucker Carlson] post not violative?”
The response read, “While we remove content that explicitly directs people not to get the vaccine, as well as content that contains explicit misrepresentations about vaccines, we reviewed this content in detail and it does not violate those policies.”
Despite this, the company was ready to demote Mr. Carlson’s video by 50 percent in order to satisfy White House demands.
Public Pressure Influences Facebook Policy
The documents also show Facebook scrambling to respond to mounting public pressure from Mr. Biden and the White House in July 2021.That month, Mr. Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” by not censoring content that the administration deemed to be “misinformation.”
In an Aug. 2, 2021, document, Facebook executives said that they were seeking third-party advice from misinformation specialists “to brainstorm some additional policy levers” they could pull “to be more aggressive against COVID and vaccine misinformation.”
They said that the move stemmed from “the continued criticism” of their approach “from the U.S. administration and a desire to kick the tires further internally on creative options.”
But the documents show that it wasn’t just the White House that prompted internal policy changes at Facebook: Sometime after Aug. 6, 2021, Facebook offered several “discreet policy options for reducing the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation” on its platforms after a discussion with the surgeon general.
For one, the company offered to make pages linked to those deemed “misinfo violators” non-recommendable to other users.
The company specifically cited its handling of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine safety advocate, who had been removed from Instagram for alleged vaccine misinformation and so would be ineligible for recommendation to Facebook users.
Facebook also said it would alter rules to make it easier for an account to be given “misinfo repeat offender status,” a status under which an account would face demotion and demonetization.
In addition, the company decided to more strongly demote vaccine information rated “partly false” by “fact-checkers,” raising the demotion rate to 80 percent from its previous 50 percent.
Contempt Proceedings Delayed Indefinitely
In the face of the company’s newfound willingness to comply with the judiciary panel, Mr. Jordan said: “The Committee has decided to hold contempt in abeyance. For now.”He criticized the company for its earlier noncompliance, writing, “Only after the Committee announced its intention to hold Mark Zuckerberg in contempt did Facebook produce ANY internal documents to the Committee, including these documents, which PROVE that government pressure was directly responsible for censorship on Facebook.”
The compliance comes more than five months after the committee first requested the materials on Feb. 15. Until now, Meta has reportedly produced only external communications with only a handful of the internal documents that were requested.
Still, Mr. Jordan indicated that Meta and Mr. Zuckerberg could still face contempt proceedings for future noncompliance: “To be clear, contempt is still on the table and WILL be used if Facebook fails to cooperate in FULL.”
