They included email between Big Tech and White House deciding when content to block. Big tech like like Google, Amazon and Facebook etc. One of emaills shown was from Zuckerberg, where he suggested removing “COVID-19 misinformation” and claim that they were forced by White House to censor that info.
Disinformation is a big problem with no obvious solution. Government regulating all speech obviously isn’t a good solution, but letting people slander and defraud with impunity is hardly a better state of affairs.
Anyone who favors free speech should read up on the psychology of lies. Unfortunately, our brains are disadvantaged against them: it is easier to learn a lie than to unlearn it (once it has been disproven).
On the one hand, I don’t really doubt the overall claim that the White House tried to censor information.
On the other hand, the republican members of this comittee are probably the last people I would trust to give a fair and unbiased accounting of anyone they see as an enemy to Trump. This is a group chaulk full of election deniers and people who were all to happy to incite an armed insurrection. Thats not even getting into their awful awful voting records.
FYI (and for the TLDR crowd) this document seems to be laser focused on Covid dissent censorship.
It’s my opinion that Covid skepticism was by and large irrational and astroturfed. Given the context was a once-in-a-century pandemic, I don’t think US government action was unjustified, and from what I’ve seen, wasn’t excessive.
Social media’s permissive moderation and controversy-boosting algorithms, on the other hand, are much bigger problems IMO.
I dont think anyone is really all that surprised or even bothered by this.
Whether anyone agrees with what the US gov did here, they were clearly doing this to try to stop everyone from panicking.
But I also think the government would be better off focusing on educating the public, rather than trying to refute disinformation. When information (right or wrong) is actively being suppressed, it only makes people even more curious about it.
