Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn Wants Biden To Answer 5 Questions Concerning ‘Coordination With Big Tech To Censor Americans’
Michael Cantrell
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Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee is now demanding that the Biden administration provide answers for a series of five questions concerning their attempt to coordinate with Big Tech platforms like social media company Facebook to censor Americans.
The senator wants to be informed about what criteria the administration is supposedly directing Big Tech companies to flag or remove posts or ban users. She then went on to question the now infamous list of 12 social media users who were accused of promoting vaccine “misinformation,” which Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary, shrugged off by saying these accounts are “public.”
The Tennessee senator then pressed the administration’s “legal basis” for this course of action and if there are now “dedicated” staffers for the process.
“New: [Marsha Blackburn] demands Biden White House answer these five questions about their ‘coordination with Big Tech to censor Americans,’” Philip Wegmann said in his report. Here are the five questions via Daily Wire:
- What criteria are you directing social media platforms to use to flag and remove posts?
- What criteria are you directing social media platforms to use to ban users?
- In your July 15th press briefing, you stated that 12 people are responsible for “65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.” Who are those account[s] and have they, or others, been removed at your direction?
- What is the legal basis for your Administration’s decision to direct social media platforms to flag and remove posts from their sites?
- Does the White House have staff dedicated to searching social media for content to flag for removal?
The Biden administration made waves last week when Psaki told reporters the administration was in communication with Facebook about apparent accounts that spread vaccine “misinformation,” seemingly advocating their censorship. She also stated that if an account is banned on one social media platform, the same individual should be banned from all other social media platforms.
On heels of the alarming comments, President Biden claimed social media was “killing people” because more censorship is not being done to stop supposed “misinformation.”
“They’re killing people,” POTUS stated, referencing Facebook, sometime last week. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”
When Psaki was pressed by a reporter on Friday about the seeming attempt to coordinate with Big Tech to censor Americans, she said Facebook and other platforms are the ones making “decisions about what information should be on their platform.”
“We don’t take anything down. We don’t block anything,” Psaki proclaimed. “Facebook, and any private sector company makes decisions about what information should be on their platform. Our point is that there is information that is leading to people not taking the vaccine, and people are dying as a result, and we have a responsibility as a public health matter to raise that issue. The responsibility we all have — the government, media platforms, public messengers — to give accurate information.”
Facebook then went on to tell NBC that the White House is trying to scapegoat the platform for “missing their vaccine goals.”
“In private exchanges, the Surgeon General has praised our work, including our efforts to inform people about COVID-19. They knew what they were doing. The White House is looking for scapegoats for missing their vaccine goals,” Facebook said.
Look, at the end of the day, we the people are fully capable of checking out our own information and determining whether or not it is right or wrong. It’s not the job of social media companies or the government, or news agencies for that matter, to take care of us.
Allow us to do our own diligent research when it comes to conflicting sets of data. We are smart enough to do so.
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