The censorious Biden regime

 Robert Spencer:

The Biden regime has already abundantly established that it has no patience for dissent. The Twitter Files show regime lackeys pressuring Twitter, along with other social media giants, to silence people who dared question, among other things, its COVID-19 narrative — yes, the one that has been shown to have been full of holes all along. But as is so often the case these days, it gets worse. Now it has come to light that the Biden White House actually pressured Meta to censor private WhatsApp texts that dared to express disagreement from the regime’s line. Yes, private texts.

This is not some crazy “far right” conspiracy theory (many of which have turned out to be true, anyway). It comes from investigative journalist David Zweig, whose Leftist bona fides are impeccable: he has written for The Atlantic, New York magazine, and Wired, among others. Despite this background, Zweig has had the integrity to reveal that the Biden regime is even more obsessed with crushing dissenting voices than we had previously known, and rivals even Stalin and Mao in its determination to allow only the approved line to be aired.

Zweig “gained access to emails between White House staffers and Meta executives about WhatsApp that underlie this investigative report. The emails were obtained through discovery in Missouri v Biden, a first amendment case brought by two attorneys general, and New Civil Liberties Alliance (a nonprofit public interest law firm) on behalf of private plaintiffs.” These emails demonstrate that less than a week after taking power, Biden’s handlers began talks with Meta executives regarding “content moderation.” That was when things took a dark turn.

Zweig notes that “of specific concern was vaccine hesitancy and how Meta would combat this across its multiple platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.” That much was to be expected, given what we already know about how Old Joe’s henchmen worked to censor dissidents on Twitter. But regime wonks made “repeated queries about another Meta property, WhatsApp, a service designed for private messaging.” Almost all of WhatsApp’s users make use of the platform for just that — private messages with one other person. Zweig says that “according to Meta, 90% of WhatsApp messages are from one person to another,” and while the app does have a group option, “groups typically have fewer than 10 people.” Yet Biden’s handlers wanted to censor disagreement even on WhatsApp.

One of the chief Stalinists, Rob Flaherty, the Biden White House’s Director of Digital Strategy, sent “multiple emails” to Meta top dogs, demanding they “tell him what interventions the company had taken on WhatsApp.” He “wanted to know what they were doing to reduce harm on the messaging app.” On March 22, 2021, this tinhorn authoritarian demanded specific information about how Meta was deep-sixing dissident WhatsApp messages: “I’m confused about how you’re measuring reduction of harm.” Apparently referring to WhatsApp’s pledge of privacy to its users, he added, “If you can’t see the message, I’m genuinely curious—how do you know what kinds of messages you’ve cut down on? Assuming you’ve got a good mousetrap here, that’s the kind of info we’re looking for above: what interventions you’ve taken, and what you’ve found to work and not work?” Mousetrap? Did the Biden regime expect WhatsApp to set out some kind of bait in order to trap dissidents?

Because of the difficulty of isolating individual dissenting texts, the objective quickly became one of propaganda rather than censorship. Zweig states that “because of WhatsApp’s structure, targeted suppression or censorship of certain information did not appear possible. Instead, much of the aim of the content moderation on WhatsApp, therefore, was to ‘push’ information to users.” WhatsApp users were inundated with agitprop from the WHO, UNICEF, and “more than 100 governments and health ministries.” Flaherty, however, wasn’t satisfied with this, and continued to push for more. When “a Meta employee responded to Flaherty’s questions, explaining that WhatsApp is for private messaging,” Flaherty “replied that he was ‘very aware’ and added a smiley face.”

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The Biden administration has been Stalinistic in its approach to managing the news and its push for its agenda.  It turns out that they overrated the efficacy of the vaccine but kept on pushing it anyway.   When people who had been fully vaccinated and boosted still came down with Covid the Biden regime wound up losing credibility.  There is an obvious difference between recommending a procedure and misreprensenting its efficacy.