During a press briefing on July 15, Jen Psaki explained that the White House is coordinating with social media companies to stop “disinformation” about Covid-19. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” she said, matter-of-factly. The White House is not just making general suggestions — it is pressing for their enforcement.
She said that the White House expects the platforms to “measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation…. This should be provided not just to researchers but to the public.” She also stated that the White House has proposed “a robust enforcement strategy.”
She said that the administration is urging social media platforms to “promote quality information sources” over “low quality information.”
Pushing for action, she reminded that “It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms sometimes that’s not accurate.”
Joe Biden, asked on July 16 for comment about Facebook’s role in Covid, responded that because the only pandemic is now among the unvaccinated, “they [Facebook] are killing people.”
Glenn Greenwald slammed the government’s calls for censorship: “The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as ‘problematic’ so that Facebook can remove them. This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks fo fascism — that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support.”
While there is indeed an enormous amount of nonsense posted about Covid-19, one can ask whether banning discussion is even helpful. Given the absolute and complete discrediting of the media and expertariat generally, banning the discussion of a certain viewpoint may have the opposite effect! If a viewpoint cannot be publicly expressed on Twitter, then it cannot be met with thoughtful replies that encourage reflection. (Although this is not the norm on Twitter, it does happen.) Some of the claims — such as about VAERS figures — are easily refuted. And the 180-degree turn on the Wuhan lab leak — censored when Trump said it and now embraced to create a war with China — hardly gives credibility to the would-be arbiters of truth!
