Matt Taibbi is one of the last true investigative reporters of the 21st Century. In 2017 he published a book about his travelling the 2016 Presidential election campaign trail. Taibbi was so unimpressed with Donald Trump (as was I at the time) that he titled his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus.” Nonetheless, Taibbi made what has proven to be an important, incisive observation. He gave Trump credit for something that made sense to me, given my 45 years in dealing with the media. According to Taibbi’s real-time observations, exactly one, single decisive move on the part of the “clown” turned the electoral tide in his favor. It was not immigration, it was not the promise of no more war, it was not anti-DEI sentiment, it had no racial overtones, it did not involve abortion, the Supreme Court, nor any other issue the media would have the American public clutch its pearls over.
At a certain point during the general election campaign the media chorus became so coordinated and so shrill against Trump – and his supporters – that Trump gave up on impressing the mainstream media (msm) and instead began treating them overtly as what he later called “the enemy of the people.” Read Taibbi’s book and see for yourself. It is a real time, organic observation that was largely ignored. Instead of self-reflecting and considering what it might do to correct itself, msm declared Matt Taibbbi an enemy. Before that, Taibbi was an ever-present presence on mainstream media. After that he was a pariah. He has since gone independent on Substack (Taibbi Substack) where he has earned more influence than he ever had when the msm embraced him.
Why is this so relevant at the moment? Because what you have witnessed over the past several months (culminating in last Thursday’s Presidential debate) not only proves Taibbi right, it proves that the “clown” wasn’t such a Bozo after all. Exhibit A is the huge portfolio of the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN – virtually every msm outlet – covering up President Biden’s degenerating cognitive state. Even a week ago, the WH press spokesperson was promoted by each of those outlets as stating the “truth” of the matter, “Biden only looks incompetent because people are altering videos” (without a single instance of alteration being offered or proven). Perhaps the best sum up of the collective MSM position over the past year comes from former Congressman longtime MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, 1984
Big Brother’s Censorship Industrial Complex has taken mind control to a whole new level. In a perfectly synchronized fashion that only a centrally coordinated government controlled network could execute, The Associated Press, NBC News, and the Poynter Institute’s International Fact Checking Network have simultaneously instructed the American people to not believe their own lying eyes.
The ‘fact checkers’ start by claiming that a “Tik Tok capture” of Joe Biden wandering off at a G7 event last week was unfairly characterized by “conservatives” as showing Joe Biden wander off only to be guided back to the event at hand by the Italian President. The ‘fact checker’s’ obviously cherry picked the tik tok version – though many others abounded – because they could claim its chopped nature could be characterized as unfairly portraying the ‘bigger picture’ ‘in context.’ They went as far as INVENTING that clearly – in context – Biden was merely having a conversation with someone out of frame.
Here is the straw dog image Big Brother picked to say poor Ole Joe was taken out of context:
This was the moment Joe Biden strangely wandered away during the G7 Summit in Italy. As the other world leaders gathered for a photograph, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni noticed Biden was absent and guided him back to the group. 🎥 Reuters #joebiden#italy#news#politics#giorgiameloni
Now, what follows is the uncut version that Big Brother tells us shows that the first was a deep fake, phony, unfair edit that rose to the level of a “LIE.” Please watch it closely to see that in fact, the larger, full context video is far more condemnatory of Biden’s mental state. You can see the G7 world leaders panicking and you can see that if Biden were having a conversation it was with an imaginary person. The relevant passage is between 09:30-10:00:
The Associated Press went a step further on Biden’s senior moment at an L.A. Fundraiser a few days ago. The video pretty clear shows Biden being physically directed by Obama off of the stage.
The Left and the media (but I repeat myself) are working overtime trying to debunk this- claiming that Obama didn’t lead Biden off stage. Unfortunately for them, it’s literally on video.
The Associated Press commands us to not believe our eyes. First it does not provide the video so that one might see for oneself. Instead it tells us:
CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama.
THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host Kimmel.
Watch it again Biden “paused”… “as he existed the stage.” He wasn’t exiting anything, let alone the stage until Obama grabs him as if he is trying to straighten him out with a yank. The fact check itself is a BIG LIE.
Perhaps it is natural for folks inclined toward a particular political bent to interpret the same event differently than folks from the opposite side of the political spectrum. So be it. Not good enough for the Thought Police. No room for interpretation. No room for independent thought.
They've gone full mask-off: 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc). There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. You have been warned. https://t.co/bzHcOYvtko
Censorship Mind Control as currently practiced by the organs of the Neo Liberal Order is essentially a three-step operation. First, effectively censor dissident voices. Second, if censorship alone cannot silence effective voices then smear them to the point where no one will listen to what they say. Third, which is often run concurrent with 2 and 3, roll out the elite’s chosen narratives as related by authoritative figures; incessantly and everywhere at once. The narrative roll out is all important as it contains the untruths Big Brother wishes to implant in our minds. The “authority” in “authoritative figures” as narrators comes at the privilege of the elite of the Neo Liberal Order; judged by his/her willingness and ability to relay what he or she is told to say and write, and decidedly not by merit.
For example, the effective author and spokesman for the roll out of the Greatest Hoax of the 21st Century (see Jacob Siegel’s Invasion of the Fact Checkers) was former FBI agent Clint Watts. That he deserves that sobriquet is not my opinion. It is that of perhaps the most powerful figure in today’s entire Global Intelligence (IC) network, former CIA and NSA head and current director of Censorship Industrial Complex Operations at the Atlantic Council, Michael Hayden. Watts was the first ‘credentialed’ public promoter of the Russia scare – the crude, but effective return to 1950’ish McCarthyist Red Scare days. Fear all that is “them” (read Russian) as it secretly permeates our precious bodily fluids. Watts was the chosen narrator of the propaganda narrative that we must shut our ears and eyes to any information designated as ‘Russian”. Of course, the ugly trick was to label anything and everything that didn’t fit the Neo Liberal Order’s dozens of propaganda narratives as “Russian”. Absurd as it was, roughly fifty percent of the U.S. population went along for the ride. The once “progressive” wings of the Mainstream Media (MSM), CNBC/CNN, became literally obsessed with this mind-programming complex front man Watts. He appeared out of nowhere as the authority on all Russian Hoax matter and was omnipresent in all major government-compliant mainstream media.
What qualified Watts for this job? Was it that he was part of the failed and discredited pre-911 U.S. government anti-terror apparatus? Was it his several years of cashing in on the Security Industrial Complex cottage industry that arose after 911 in spite of the fact it was the result of the pre-911 failures of the likes of Watts? Nothing in his overt, officially listed background would seem to qualify him as a CIA storyteller, least of all on the matter of “Russian Misinformation.” And yet, having been exposed as a rank peddler of the Russia Hoax, Watts just keeps skipping from one high paying propagandist gig after another. Here is the latest, from a recent piece by William A. Jacobson (Founder of the Equal Protection Project) in the NY Post:
In another bad omen, Clint Watts, the FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor who founded the Hamilton 68 dashboard, has been hired by Microsoft to run their disinformation unit during the upcoming election.
If Hamilton 68 isn’t ringing any bells, it was the left-wing think tank notorious for accusing legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots. It pushed the false narrative of massive Russian influence that was heavily relied upon by many mainstream media outlets and possibly even swayed the 2020 election.
And now this same guy is in charge of monitoring disinformation for Microsoft during the next election. What possibly could go wrong? Everything.
With Google Jigsaw in firm Censorship Industrial Complex control, (see Mike Benz’ Google Jigsaw’s Plan to Vaccinate Your Mind) most traditional channels of communication have been seized by Big Brother leading up to election day 2024.
So, how does a backbencher security hack become an omnipresent front man for the Censorship Industrial complex? While his official biography doesn’t give a clue, his own words do. According to him, Watts’ “mentor” in the storytelling craft is the man who wrote the official record of the alleged events leading up to 911. Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower covered up so well for the CIA/FBI Pre-911 negligence (or treason?) that according to Watts the head of the FBI (Robert Muller, who was appointed to mop up the severe FBI/CIA post 911 PR damage) instructed supervisors like Watts to “make sure everyone gets one of these books.” And Watts eagerly complied, saying he bought “boxes” of the book and distributed them to “all my colleagues.”
Think about it – the largest law enforcement/intelligence agency in the world needs an ‘outside’ author to school its members on the most colossal failure of any government agency in world history? Why? Perhaps because the primary, glaring criticism of Wright’s book was his justification of the CIA’s withholding of critical intelligence from the FBI (and the FBI’s own serial fumbles) that clearly prevented law enforcement from foiling the well pre-broadcast 911 catastrophe? Wright’s authoritative answer to why the problems was that the CIA and FBI were overworked and underpaid. As we shall see, Wright is an expert at personalizing societal catastrophes, and elevating villains to hero status in order sell rotten New Liberal Order false narratives.
In either event, the cloying cult member like adoration a head of a major counter terrorism department directs toward a ‘citizen’ author is remarkable. That Counter Terrorism head, Watts, reminisced during a 2022 podcast that he “had the great fortune of being his (Wright’s) driver between airports and auditoriums” during his book promotional tour; and this is where his mentor schooled him on becoming a professional storyteller. Said Watts, Wright “provided much needed guidance to me.”
Coincidentally, during that same podcast Watts and Wright neatly lay the groundwork justification for the CIA and FBI to turn their outward facing powers inward toward American Citizens. While Middle Eastern terrorists pour over our Southern Border in unprecedented numbers, Wright and Watts seem to concur that intelligence and law enforcement ought instead be going after Trump supporters. According to Watts, it “is a sure thing” that domestic terrorists have “biological weapons…very much on their minds.”
Referring to Wright’s epic apologia to Anthony Fauci, Pfizer, NIH, and the Biden Administration (the book Plague Year, so chock full of since-discredited big pharma/government propaganda to warrant its own post), Watts and Wright continue to pimp government COVID-19 myths that were long-since proven phony by the time of the 2022 podcast.
Thus, Wright laments (with Watts agreeing like a bobbing head doll) that what went wrong with the pandemic and what is most crucially wrong with America today is: “What we didn’t have was the trust we needed to have in our government institutions. We just don’t rate on that scale at all.”
As this blog has detailed, these ‘love, devotion, and surrender’ (to Big Brother) demands were being made just as the Biden administration was unleashing the largest roll back in civil rights in American history. Wright said Americans are just plain backward as compared to “Angolans” and “Latvians” in their unwillingness to put full faith into government agencies, at the very moment those agencies were betraying Americans like never before.
Did Larry mean we should have dropped to our knees and demonstrated cultlike compliance to the NIH/Mainstream media’s anointed Mr. Science? The guy who was so infallible that to question him was to question science itself? The guy who is now being exposed by documents as the kingpin of perhaps the most harmful and deadly fraud ever perpetrated on the American people; this guy? See, Fauci Kingpin in Massive Cover up.
Among other things, here is what Fauci sought to cover up: Fauci Cover-up.
As we shall see, that is precisely what Big Brother narrator supreme Lawrence Wright means.
The US Congress has been steadily forfeiting power to the Presidency for the past 2 ½ decades. The acceleration of the self-enervation of Congress began in the wake of 911 when it cowardly voted for the formation of the Executive-Branch-led security state (the Patriot Act and all of its Bill of Rights stripping progeny), rather than do its job and get to the bottom of the Intelligence-Military-Law Enforcement sector’s treasonous failures leading to 911. Congress followed that with its forfeiture of the power to determine whether the United States goes to war or not; a power vested in Congress by the original U.S. Constitution. Current President Joe Biden (then senator) was one of the most vociferous proponents of handing that power over to George W. Bush in 2003; while Biden also served as a front-row cheerleader for the Iraq War travesty.
Since then the Presidency has been steadily gifted more and more powers; including the power of the purse, another critical existential constitutional prerogative of the Congress. U.S. politics has degenerated into an every-four-years sweepstakes, the result of which determines which branch of the Uniparty gets first dibs on the spoils wrought from U.S. citizen taxation. In essence, we have become an autocracy with a new stand-in dictator picked every four to eight years. The administrative state is the only constant, and it loyally serves only the vast sea of blood sucking nongovernment organizations, think tanks, corporate lobbyists, arms and drug manufacturers which created and support it. Only an autocratic plutocracy remains of a once promising democratic republic experiment.
Despite all evidence to the contrary many people still associate their party as the defender and proponent of certain issues that in fact they are not. And for this reason they put up a Quixotic fight to the death to get their democrat or their republican elected to wear the crown. For example, republicans still consider themselves fiscal and monetary conservatives. And yet, when they got their most “conservative” President in place in 2016, they encouraged Trump to far outspend all other Presidents before him – only to promptly be outdone by Biden. Example B, democrats still fancy themselves the protectors of civil liberties. And yet, with their boy Biden in charge, the security state – led by its Censorship Industrial Complex – has rolled back First Amendment rights like never before (even in times of war). Further, for some odd reason Americans seem to equate democrats with peace. Yet, again Biden has us on the precipice of World War III, and seems hell-bent on pushing us over the edge, see Wag the Dog? .
Neither of the leading candidates is likely to do anything but exacerbate the inflation problem, the waning global influence problem, and the Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, Military Industrial Complex policy domination problem. There are clear lines of demarcation on the issues of immigration and abortion and several personal values issues that ought not be government issues at all. But, that is about it. The only sane way to resolve any political divisions and differences, and only democratic way, is through full access to information and healthy public debate. And this leads to THE critical issue not receiving the attention it ought to.
Both sides are claiming that the election of the other will mark the ‘End of Democracy’. As noted that is a misnomer and somewhat of a straw dog because the American political machine has long-since voted and ruled against the collective interests of the populace. What is not being directly addressed is the only black and white issue that fundamentally determines whether we continue the path toward absolute plutocratic autocracy or redirect the empire back toward the democratic republic roots that led to it becoming the world’s more influential nation. That is, will either candidate say or do anything toward a commitment to restoration of the Bill of Rights upon which this country was founded? It might be appropriate to refer to Elon Musk who has ponied up 44 billion dollars to help restore those rights by his purchase of Twitter and its conversion to X; making it the last major online forum unsullied by the long arm of Big Brother’s Censorship Industrial Complex. When asked why he took a multibillion dollar hit on the deal, he has repeatedly noted that without freedom of speech and the press one does not have democracy in any form, democratic republic or otherwise. Democracy in order to survive requires first and foremost a well-informed citizenry. And that is only possible in a society where speech and expression are not restricted by specialized interests of any kind.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made it patently clear that he is committed to restoration of the First Amendment of the Constitution. With the two wings of the Uniparty spending hundreds of millions to defame, shame, and cancel him, Kennedy’s chances remain a long-shot. Ironically, Kennedy’s participation is likely tip the scales either toward the Republican or the Democrat candidate.
If you feel extorted into using your vote on the lesser of two evils, you are by no means alone. I believe a majority of people have felt that way over the past 10 years, at the least. If you feel that way today, I suggest you pay attention to where the candidates go with the critical issue addressed here, restoration of the Bill of Rights, starting with the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is the only issue that measures up to the rallying cry “we have got to save our Democracy.”
Wag the Dog definition: Wag the dog is, as a political term, the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue usually through military force. It stems from the generic use of the term to mean a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). – Wikipedia
You all may recall how Joe Biden and the Neo Liberal Order machine for two years restricted Ukraine from firing into Russia the country; for fear that it would likely result in the beginning of world war III and global nuclear warfare.
With all the White House end zone dancing over the lawfare ‘victory’ against Trump this week, you may have missed this. The very day of the verdict, the White House gave Ukraine the green light to fire away within the country of Russia, with its tens of billions of dollars of gifted United States of America bombs.
This is a double-twisted wagging of the dog. The White House uses the distraction of the Trump verdict to get World War III started, the escalation of which will conveniently distract from the corruption of the Trump trial and the rest of New Liberal Order lawfare coming to light.
First, all the recent chatter about Artificial Intelligence is primarily this: Wall Street stock pump hype. That machine churns out much of our economic “news” through mainstream media outlets such as Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and others. Since last June when the “AI is upon us” campaign began Wall Street’s biggest have profited in the trillions; all the while economic conditions have deteriorated for all working Americans. The mainstream propaganda arms have been concurrently running a campaign that anyone who complains (read 98% of Americans who are being crippled by inflation) are numbskull country bumpkins (with white supremacist leanings – even those of color) who don’t understand the daily stream of cooked, false economic statistics the Biden administration churns out. Yes, everyone on Wall Street (including those who ‘cover’ it for the Times, Journal, Bloomberg, etc) know that those statistics are as phony as a three dollar bill without any shadow of a doubt. They couldn’t do their job if they did not. Their job being to justify the worst economic disaster in human history. That is a $34,000,000,000 national debt that is increasing by a trillion dollars every one hundred days.
So how is AI news stock pump hype? The lie is this, AI is not coming. AI is here and has been here for decades. It is called collection, analysis and distribution of data through algorithms. Why America has never been dumber (and ALL available statistics says that it is) is because for the past twenty-five years it has been educated and conditioned by a data system algorithm that measures truth by quantity, that is, popularity. Group think has ruled the day for the past two decades through implementation of an artificial intelligence that gives people the highest rated (most popular) item they inquire about. It doesn’t take much understanding of history to recognize how morally and intellectually destructive this is. In science, governance, business, and technology (to name a few important fields) positive, important breakthroughs and advancement are always and only achieved through individual, creative thought that goes diametrically opposed to group think of the day (whether that day be 10,000 b.c. or 2024). One does not increase one’s intelligence by continually basking in self-affirming feedback. One advances in intelligence and character by exposing oneself to a wide diversity of information, investigating and continually increasing one’s ability to rationally and morally evaluate it to solve problems.
The first major ‘leap’ in artificial intelligence – between 2008 and the present – was to add a crippling virus to an already sick infected body. That is, Big Tech stole all your browsing , email and text information to tailor advertising for you and pummels you with it. This was a scandal for about 6 months a few years back. But, the constantly imposed, digital neo maniacal distraction machine rapidly diverted Americans’ attention off of doing anything about that.
We are in the midst of the second major ‘leap’ in AI – that of the imposition of the Censorship Industrial Complex upon our minds. That is the entire subject of this blog since March of 2024. This is the existential battle for free thought and expression we find ourselves in.
The lastest ’advancement’ in Artificial Intelligence, the intelligentsia will tell you, is that that very destructive reverse learning process described above can now go on automatic pilot and ‘teach’ itself to solve more and more problems. The “breakthrough” that literally mints new billionaires by the week on Wall Street is that this process is expected to replace all working people. No lie. Look at any given day on Wall Street. Many dozens of major corporation over the past year have announced mass layoffs attributable to AI. Each announcement is accompanied by a massive pump up of the given corporations’ stock price. In the odd event that a company announces more hiring, or even in most cases more investment in production facilities, Wall Street promptly sells its stock sending its overall ‘value’ spiraling downward. And so the New Liberal Order (whose individual members are 90% funded by stock portfolios auto-inflation) pushes this carrot and stick propaganda routine: Carrot, go with the flow and you will live in a paradise where no one works and everyone lives in his or her own dream world (ala The Matrix), or resist and be labelled a terrorist and die a violent, degrading death.
The real “breakthrough” with AI is this. The ‘greatest’ minds at Google (a CIA/Military Industrial Complex startup) and its brethren at Microsoft, Apple, and Meta have decided they can replicate those minds into an omnipotent, omnipresent autopilot. You can see it already.
Exhibit one, Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence vehicle. During its roll out early this year, it became apparent the entire system was infected with the woke mind virus carried by its creators. Gemini was unwilling to, even incapable of, generating an image of a white historical figure. It would give you a native American Thomas Jefferson, an Asian George Washington, but not a single white man among the founding fathers. Oh, there was a spate of outrage. Vivek Ramswamy prematurely crowed how Google was paying the “go woke, go broke” price because its stock price faltered for a couple days. Turns out, it faltered for 7 days total. That is how long it took for our neo maniacal, digital driven distraction culture to forget the flap. 3 months later and the stock is up 33% way above all time highs. It is business as usual.
Exhibit two, Microsoft’s AI vehicle “CoPilot.” Experiment with it yourself. First, the Edge search engine defaults to the top ten ‘trending’ news items of the day. As testimony to paragraph 2 above on enforced group think – 60-70% of those items are utterly pointless distraction, with little to no value to intelligent thought. For example, for many months its number one item every day was the latest revealing breast shots of Paige Spiranac – so much for Microsoft’s ‘anti-sexist’ woke virtue culture. It is always populated with one or more celebrity gossip items. It’s the lowest common denominator trash you can find. What is more disconcerting is AI’s “improvement” on the remaining 30-40 percent of hard news items. Rather than allow one to browse the news results and determine the reason for its popularity yourself, Microsoft now insists on mansplaing* it to you. And those condescending explanations are always preaching the Neo Liberal (read socialist/communist) talking points interpretation. Thus, any flap of the big spending, war mongering, morals degenerating variety is immediately and authoritatively justified as “trending” only because, racist, right wing militia oriented Q anon types are overreacting. Test it yourself. It is mind numbing.
Only the most immoral, entitled, arrogant elite in world history benefit from this; and even then only in the short run. The arrogant, privileged elite impose their minds upon the workings of every aspect of society through their now omnipresent digital networks; and there is no human there to suffer any of the negative consequences. It is “artificial” intelligence – so when the rubber meets the road and this society degenerates into a Mad Max dog-eat-dog scramble for subsistence, there is no one there to hold to account, no one who can be made to have a change of heart, a realization leading to a change of course. No, it is automatic pilot and their ain’t anything anyone can do about it. Unless, more folks start doing something about it before the rubber does meet the road.
While Big Tech gleefully predicts an AI run world where no one works, consider this: thousands of studies have demonstrated conclusively that the end of work equals the end of life. Happiness itself is defined as overcoming obstacles to achieve accomplishment; the very definition of work (read for example Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). The only thing worse than a communist worker’s paradise is a Big Brother no work permitted matrix.
*Mansplaining. Why use “mansplaining”? Because it is the perfect demonstration of the hypocrisy of the Neo Liberal Order woke mind culture. That culture insists on systematically degrading women by replacing them with men pretending to be women. Military spokespeople, College athletes, the White House giving out an award for advancement of women’s rights to a man wearing a dress, and just now Cannes awarding best actress to a biological man. Meanwhile, Western fertility rates hit their lowest ever. Ever think about why?
I have referenced two people in the vanguard of the fight to counter government censorship. Both got together for a joint interview on the subject of the Censorship Industrial Complex and the shapes it is taking today. Here are Jacob Siegal and Michael Schellenberger talking with Freddie Sayers:
So, some have inquired, ‘are you kidding me, you’re promoting RFK Jr?; anti vax, conspiracy theories and all?” Answer, I’m not promoting anyone or anything other than restoration of the Bill of Rights which as we have thus far shown is under unprecedented threat. Bobby Kennedy happens to be doing more than most to restore those rights. Because of that he has been targeted more viciously than most by the Censorship Industrial Complex and its propaganda arms. That is the main point of his relevance to this investigation. The following video gives a little perspective – not shared by mainstream media. Note that the government stooges at Google have implanted the following notice in the top left hand corner of the screen “COVID-19 vaccine – Get the latest information from the CDC.” Big brother just cannot give it a rest.
I ended the last post Censoring Science: Coerced Consensus with a clip from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claiming the Biden White House immediately after inauguration coerced Facebook to censor Kennedy. He has so far proven as much in courts. Two days after that post, the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a report backed by a plethora of documents proving the White House application of coercion to censor against virtually all major internet platforms. The report sums it up as follows:
Now, having obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of emails and other relevant nonpublic documents, the Committee and Select Subcommittee can provide a more complete picture of how and the extent to which the Biden White House coerced companies to suppress free speech.
• Big Tech Changed Their Content Moderation Policies Because of Biden White House Pressure. The Biden White House pressure campaign largely succeeded in 2021. In the weeks and months following the start of the White House pressure campaign, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon all changed their content moderation policies. The White House pressured companies to censor information that did not violate their content moderation policies at the time. The best evidence to assess why content moderation policies were changed is to review relevant email correspondence and other documents at the time of the policy change. Indeed, both Facebook and Amazon referred to the Biden White House’s efforts as “pressure.” Here is a subset of key documents first obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee pursuant to subpoena:
o In March 2021, an Amazon employee emailed others within the company about the reason for the Amazon bookstore’s new content moderation policy change: “[T]he impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden Administration about sensitive books we’re giving prominent placement to.”
o In March 2021, just one day prior to a scheduled call with the White House, an Amazon employee explained how changes to Amazon’s bookstore policies were being applied “due to criticism from the Biden people.”
o In July 2021, when Facebook executive Nick Clegg asked a Facebook employee why the company censored the man-made theory of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the employee responded: “Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more. . . . We shouldn’t have done it.”
o In August 2021, an internal Facebook email explained why the company was developing, and ultimately implementing, new content moderation policies: “[Facebook’s] Leadership asked Misinfo Policy . . . to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against . . . misinformation. This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.”
o In September 2021, after receiving months of criticism for not censoring non-violative content, YouTube shared with the Biden White House a new “policy proposal” to censor more content criticizing the safety and efficacy of vaccines, asking for “any feedback” the White House could provide before the policy had been finalized. The White House gushed: “at first blush, seems like a great step.”
Moving On Up a Little Higher 