The Biden administration’s alleged efforts to silence critics of vaccines garner international attention.
Platform independence discussions have been rekindled by social media censorship and the impact of US government officials on social media firms.
The administration’s relationship with US-based social media giants has always been tense, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks about censorship are still relevant today.
Zuckerberg claimed in a recent appearance with the Joe Rogan podcast that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration made an effort to silence critics of vaccines.
“These people from the Biden administration would call up our team, scream at them and curse,” he stated.
The US government and social media
Edward Snowden, a computer scientist and former CIA systems administrator, first revealed the US government’s cooperation with social media corporations in 2013, illuminating the government’s control over these platforms.
Even though Snowden’s revelations garnered a lot of attention, debates concerning social media and the government waned until 2022, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, which is now known as X.
The problem gained attention again after the “Twitter Files” were made public.
Reporter David Zweig of the Free Press published the tenth revelation, which showed that US administrations had put pressure on a number of tech behemoths, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, about how they handled COVID-19 content.
Zweig pointed out that the Biden administration similarly pushed businesses to spread its public health message, telling them to “be very afraid of Covid and do exactly what we say to stay safe,” while the Trump government expressed reservations about information that would incite fear early in the pandemic.
Notably, President Biden’s statement that COVID-19-related content on social media was “killing people” prompted comparable investigation, which led to the suspension of former New York Times writer and anti-vaccine figure Alex Berenson’s account.
Censored accounts of Palestine supporters
Global outrage over the suppression of accounts belonging to Palestine supporters, particularly on Meta’s platforms, grew after the Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched a cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking a wider confrontation between Israel and Palestine.
User interaction with news sources from Gaza and the West Bank drastically decreased, and images of Palestinian leaders were restricted.
