Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on August, 26th that the Biden Administration pressured Facebook to censor content related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The White House requested the company take down “misinformation” that theoretically posed a threat to public safety.
President Joe Biden claimed in the summer of 2021 that Facebook was “killing people” by allowing doctors and scientists to speak out against what they saw as a mishandling of the pandemic response. An often-begged question with regards to the First Amendment is the following: does the media have any responsibility as it pertains to free speech?
The Biden Administration certainly thinks so. The White House released a statement claiming that it believes that “tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people.” Though Zuckerberg caved to the federal government’s demands at the time, the letter expresses regret for allowing the government to pick and choose what information is made available to the public on social media.
Zuckerberg wrote: “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
Zuckerberg’s sentiment implicitly pertains to George Orwell’s famous novel 1984. Though the book is taught nationally in public schools, it appears that the story’s lessons have broadly fallen on deaf ears in our current culture.
Orwell warns readers of the dangers of totalitarianism by creating a fictionalized government that controls the dissemination of information and destroys individualism.
The behavior of our federal government, unfortunately, is eerily similar to that described in 1984.
The Disinformation Governance Board was a board created within the United States Department of Homeland Security that was announced in April of 2022. Its purpose was to combat misinformation and disinformation related to national security- namely, false information regarding the southern border and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Thankfully, the backlash to the creation of the board was so severe that the Biden Administration had to scrap the project and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas disbanded it in August of that year.
Orwell’s story features the “Ministry of Truth,” one of four government ministries that is tasked with controlling and manipulating information so the Party can silence opponents and inconvenient narratives.
The Orwellian nature of the Disinformation Governance Board is representative of an attack against the First Amendment and the federal government’s weaponization of censorship. Figures such as Zuckerberg, however, have the power to raise awareness of this issue and protect the public from this over-extension of government.
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