Every day it seems that more and more information about the Left’s attempt at censorship is coming to light. Recently it has been revealed that the Biden Administration wanted to censor your personal text messages.
The Biden administration has already amply demonstrated its intolerance for dissent. The Twitter Files reveal that government lackeys exerted pressure on Twitter and other social media companies to quiet anyone who, among other things, dared to challenge the COVID-19 story — yeah, the one that has been proved to have been full of holes the entire time. Just when you think they couldn’t possibly attempt to censor anything else, it gets worse. According to recent reports, the Biden White House pressured Meta to filter private WhatsApp messages that disagreed with the regime’s position. Yes, that wanted to censor private texting.
Facebook (now called Meta) had already blocked its private chat service. Before the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, WhatsApp suspended over 100,000 accounts in response to rumors that supporters of populist candidate Jair Bolsonaro were using the network to spread “misinformation.”
According to emails uncovered via discovery in Missouri v. Biden, a multi-state lawsuit charging the Biden Administration of collaborating with tech firms to undermine First Amendment rights in the United States, the White House also sought WhatsApp censorship.
David Zweig, a writer for The Atlantic, New York magazine, and Wired, declared that the Biden government is far more preoccupied with silencing dissident voices than most had previously believed, rivaling Stalin and Mao in its drive to broadcast only the official message.
Zweig gained access to White House workers’ and Meta executives’ WhatsApp-related emails, forming the investigation’s basis. The emails were part of the discovery from the Missouri v. Biden case, filed on behalf of private plaintiffs. These emails reveal that within a week of Biden’s inauguration, his managers initiated discussions with Meta officials over “content filtering.”
The situation then took a bad turn. Zweig said a particular concern was vaccine hesitancy and how Meta would address it via its many platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Given what everyone now knows about how Old Joe’s minions tried to restrict dissidents on Twitter, this was to be expected. But the Biden administration made repetitive inquiries about another Meta product, WhatsApp, a private messaging app. Nearly all WhatsApp users use the platform to send private messages to a single recipient. Zweig states that according to Meta, 90% of WhatsApp chats are one-to-one. While the program provides a group feature, groups generally comprise less than ten individuals. However, that didn’t stop Biden’s aides from trying to stifle criticism even on WhatsApp.
Zweig argues that because of the nature of WhatsApp, targeted suppression or filtering of specific material seems impossible. Instead, the content filtering on WhatsApp was primarily intended to “push” information to consumers. The WHO, UNICEF, and more than one hundred nations and health ministries blasted WhatsApp users with propaganda.
The emails began in March 2021 and revealed Joe Biden’s Director of Digital Strategy, Rob Flaherty, pressured Facebook officials to ban WhatsApp usage by Americans.
Flaherty wrote “several emails” to Meta’s top dogs, requesting that they inform him what actions the business had done on WhatsApp. He repeatedly wanted to know what was being done to mitigate the harm on the chat app. On March 22, 2021, seemingly unimpressed with previous explanations, he commented: If you can’t see the content, how do you know what types of texts you’ve eliminated? Flaherty then asked Meta personnel if they provided users with a good mousetrap; he wanted to know what information they were seeking: what treatments they’ve tried and what they’ve discovered to work and not work.
Mousetrap? Did the Biden administration anticipate that WhatsApp would use bait to lure dissidents? Due to the difficulties of distinguishing specific dissident texts, the focus then swiftly shifted from suppression to promotion.
But, Flaherty was not pleased and continued to press for more. When a Meta employee answered Flaherty’s queries by emphasizing that WhatsApp is for private chat, Flaherty replied that he was aware with a happy face.
Yet, the app’s principal instrument for repressing criticism was restricting the ability to send messages. But Flaherty remained dissatisfied, writing to Meta executives that he was worried most about the measures and adjustments they were making to address the nation’s vaccination reluctance problem. Flaherty continues to pressure Meta about how effective they had been in reducing the transmission of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation among vaccine-hesitant individuals.
Don’t forget that he was writing about a private messaging service. How long until the Biden administration hires individuals to monitor your private communications and filter those it deems to contain “misinformation”? This notion may not be as fantastical or that day as far as one would like to believe.