Fresh Insights from the latest Facebook Files show the extraordinary measures the Biden administration was keen on taking to sway the narrative surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic on social media giants like Facebook.
Exchanges between high-level Facebook executives and administration officials reveal their joint efforts to combat vaccine misinformation and hesitancy. The Biden administration, in its pursuit to increase vaccine uptake across the nation, apparently sought Facebook’s assistance in gaining access to unique tools to target vaccine-hesitant users directly.
The administration’s keenness to sway the narrative has sparked major concerns over privacy, free speech, and government overreach. Critics highlight and condemn that such close collaboration infringes on users’ right to privacy and freedom of expression. They question the morality of targeting individuals based on their expressed beliefs and the potential implications for democratic discourse in an increasingly digitized public sphere.
This development comes as a startling defiance to earlier assertions by White House representatives. Internal communications expose the extent to which the administration pressed for privileged access to unique tools to directly target vaccine-hesitant users, as well as chastised Facebook staff for what they perceived as insufficient data sharing.
In one example, Meta told The White House that it would suppress comments questioning whether people should get a vaccine under a government mandate and whether the government mandate itself was overreach.
Facebook said that it demoted such content whether it was true or not, because it leads to a “vaccine negative environment.”
