Following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s accusation of censorship by the White House last month, a chair of a House Oversight subcommittee is requesting that the Biden administration produce any records describing attempts to restrict content.
In a letter sent to President Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on cybersecurity, urged the White House to “cease and desist” from engaging in such behavior on social media platforms.
“In the interest of good government, and to ensure the integrity of the upcoming national election, I am writing to request information on any information suppression campaigns in which the Administration is currently engaged,” the senator said.
“I urge you to cease and desist any such activity, and ensure that all employees of the Executive Branch refrain from exerting political pressure on social media companies to censor content in accord with White House preferences.”
Near the end of August, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, in which he accused Biden officials of “repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
This follows a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court in favor of the Biden administration, which had previously been challenged by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri. These states had claimed that the Obama administration had conspired with social media corporations to censor free expression.
According to SCOTUS Blog, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote for the majority, stated that the plaintiffs’ charges did not have a “concrete link” to the actions of government officials.
But Republicans interpreted Zuckerberg’s letter as proof that Biden’s associates were attempting to block social media posts that they found offensive.
In her letter, Mace noted that the news surfaced little more than two months before to the election.
“Mr. Zuckerberg’s latest disclosure arrives at a time when the Presidential election contest is getting into full swing—and amid rising concerns of the political influence of social media companies,” according to her.
“Troubling revelations of how Facebook and Google sites responded to users seeking information on the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt of President Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania prompted committee Chairman James Comer to write these companies on August 14, 2024 to better understand how and why both companies chose to limit visibility of information about the attempt on the President’s life.”
She requested that, by September 25th, the White House provide her subcommittee with all records of correspondence with social media firms and any correspondence between federal workers regarding these type of restrictions.