September 3, 2024
Last week, confirmation of a long-held notion of an organized effort to control the information available to the public — which opponents and “fact-checkers” labeled as “false” and “conspiracy theories” — came to light.
A story, attributed to Thomson/Reuters, appeared on Newsmax.com, saying that “Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg said senior officials in the [Biden-Harris] administration had pressured his social media company to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic, adding that he would push back if this were to happen again.”
This revelation came to light in a letter from Zuckerberg to the House Judiciary Committee. He expressed regret for not speaking up about this earlier, and he also expressed regret about some decisions made by Meta Platforms’ applications Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp about removing certain content that had been identified.
In addition to COVID-19 content, information relating to the Hunter Biden laptop that was available ahead of the 2020 election was labeled “Russian disinformation,” and as a result was widely unavailable to the public. Undoubtedly, this same thing happened to other pieces of information.
Zuckerberg deserves some credit for admitting what was suspected for so long. Too bad it took him years to get to this point.
In the letter, he also said he would “not make any contributions to support electoral infrastructure in this year's presidential election so as to ‘not play a role one way or another’ in the November vote.”
The White House has responded to this revelation with a statement to Fox News in which it did not admit to or deny Zuckerberg’s charge of the administration applying pressure on Meta.
Zuckerberg wrote, "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it.” “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today."
The House Judiciary Committee called Zuckerberg’s admission of Facebook’s censoring of Americans a “big win for free speech.”
This revelation increases the likelihood that some, or perhaps a lot, of the other suspected instances of censoring were also not “conspiracy theories” or “false” information.
It supports the allegations of wide-spread dishonesty in the handling of important information, and that some in our country are willing to play dirty.
The concept of free speech as guaranteed to Americans by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects unpopular speech, and even offensive speech. What is unpopular and/or offensive to one group may well be quite important to another group.
Without a variety of ideas being freely circulated, how can Americans possibly work their way to a valid understanding of things, so that they can make informed decisions about issues, particularly things as critical as election choices?
And while what Meta and other information sources did may not be against the law, the case that was cited and other similar instances of blocking information certainly is against the spirit of the First Amendment.
What these platforms did certainly interferes with the very reason that our Founders made the amendment protecting free speech the first of the ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. They understood that the people must have all the available information they need and are entitled to, good or bad, popular or unpopular, offensive or not.
However, such action by elements of our federal, state and local governments definitely is illegal. And Zuckerberg’s message about the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to censor speech ought to anger all of us.
The country is now experiencing a dangerous attack on integrity, honor and honesty. Dishonesty in politics is not new. But it has grown greatly over recent years, and is even more of a problem than ever.
How many newspapers and magazines, TV and radio networks and stations, and internet sites have dishonestly censored ideas that do not match their preferred political ideas? How many in our public education systems are there not to teach the young the things they need to become productive adults, but to indoctrinate them with anti-American ideas?
This lack of honor and integrity is a characteristic of many in the faction that is desperately working to defeat Donald Trump in his effort to be re-elected as President. He is a great threat to their goal of achieving eternal control of the country. This is a goal they cannot achieve through honest means, because this radical socialist/communist goal does not have the necessary support of the electorate. Therefore, their working motto is, “we will win, and we will use any method available to achieve that goal.”
People with integrity know that they must win honorably and honestly, and if they lose, it must be the result of an honorable and honest effort. That is the American way.
This revelation illustrates what happens when the Constitution and our laws are not followed. Imagine the chaos if the Democrats’ desires to pack the Supreme Court, do away with the Senate filibuster, continue the open-border policy, move control of elections from the states to the federal government, and other radical changes to the country’s operating procedure are put into effect.
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