A recent House committee report has exposed internal communications among top executives at major tech companies, revealing what it calls "damning discoveries" about the Biden administration's alleged efforts to influence these platforms. The 800-page report, titled "The Censorship-industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration," follows a subpoena from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) last year.
The investigation, which involved tech giants like Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, aimed to understand the extent to which the Executive Branch may have coerced or colluded with these companies to censor speech. The report highlights instances where the platforms censored information related to COVID-19 due to perceived pressure from the government.
According to the report, the Biden administration aimed to crack down on "vaccine misinformation," leading to changes in content-moderation policies by Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon. These changes included censoring information ranging from COVID-19 "misinformation" to determining what types of books were permissible on Amazon Marketplace.
Internal emails from Facebook executives in July 2021, for example, indicated that the company understood the Biden White House's position as wanting to remove negative information or opinions about the vaccine, as well as humorous or satirical content suggesting the vaccine isn't safe. In one email, Facebook executive Nick Clegg questioned the company's decision to censor the lab-leak theory of COVID-19, with an employee admitting that they censored it due to pressure from the Biden administration and others.
The report also mentioned instances where executives tried to appease the Biden administration, with one email from Clegg suggesting that Facebook should be responsive to the administration's concerns due to other priorities they had with them.
This report comes at a time when big tech companies have faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. In March, the Supreme Court heard arguments challenging the Biden administration's alleged coordination with Big Tech to censor certain political messages.