New documents released by America First Legal (AFL) reveal how Facebook allegedly worked with the Biden administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to censor Americans, streamlining a process for reporting “misinformation.”
The documents indicate that Facebook created a special portal where CDC officials could flag content related to COVID-19 and vaccines for removal. According to AFL, this portal allowed government employees to submit up to 20 links at a time, bypassing traditional email-based reporting methods, as reported by the Daily Caller.
The onboarding documents, which AFL recently made public, show that Facebook provided training to CDC employees on using this system in May 2021. This “Government Reporting System” facilitated government requests for content removal, further blurring the line between public policy and private sector control of information.
In its press release, AFL described this collaboration as an “end-to-end workflow,” where Facebook processed requests flagged by the CDC, raising concerns about censorship and the suppression of free speech.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has acknowledged the pressure his company faced from the Biden administration but insisted that final decisions on content removal were made internally. In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote, “It was our decision whether or not to take content down… including COVID-19-related changes we made.” He emphasized that Meta is prepared to resist future government pressure.
Gene Hamilton, AFL’s Executive Director, argued that these documents expose how the government used its influence to censor Americans unconstitutionally. AFL’s findings follow a series of investigations into the government’s role in censoring online platforms like Facebook during the pandemic.
