WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The Biden administration denied Friday having any involvement in Twitter’s past censorship decisions despite having not only admitted but boasted about such involvement in the past.
For the past two weeks, new Twitter owner Elon Musk has been giving what he calls the Twitter Files, a trove of documentation on the previous management’s choices to remove or limit disfavored content and accounts, to various journalists for dissemination.
Revelations so far shed light on the platform’s efforts to suppress the 2020 story about presidential son Hunter Biden’s laptop, the shadow-banning of conservative personalities, the removal of former President Donald Trump, and the quashing of dissenting voices on COVID-19 policy, among other issues.
Of particular interest has been whether the material would directly tie such censorship to government requests, which could potentially transform private business decisions into First Amendment violations.
To date, the releases do not yet contain such a smoking gun, though there have been references to Twitter executives meeting with federal agencies that falsely claimed the laptop story was Russian disinformation, and the involvement of former Twitter deputy general counsel James Baker, who had previously worked for the FBI, has drawn scrutiny.
“We were not involved,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about the situation, and specifically whether anyone in the White House had been in contact with Baker. “It’s up to private companies to make these type of decisions. We were not involved. I can say that we were not involved.”
However, the Twitter Files are not the only information source on the question.
Last year, in the context of demanding that social media platforms do more to silence dissenting COVID voices, Jean-Pierre’s predecessor Jenn Psaki openly declared that “we’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” In September, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt released court documents revealing that dozens of federal officials “have interacted with social media companies on misinformation,” including “weekly meetings” between representatives for Facebook and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Last week, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry argued that his and Schmitt’s deposition of former White House COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci further reinforced that government and Big Tech colluded to restrict speech.
Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times, the attorneys general said, and testified that he had never personally contacted a social media company to ask for content to be taken down. However, Fauci and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had 13 different conversations in 2020, according to information obtained during the lawsuit process.
Once considered a left-of-center individual best known for electric vehicles and private space travel, in recent years Musk has staked out a reputation for political independence and found new allies on the political right, emerging as a vocal critic of censorship by social networks, going so far as to purchase Twitter this year. His efforts to make the platform more open and politically neutral have earned him a high spot on left-wing activists’ enemies list.