[JustTheNews] "Unwinding" Facebook's demotion of New York Post bombshell "now will unfortunately create more headaches than it’s worth" and problem is "we manually" demoted the story, executives told each other.
Big Tech platforms had shockingly frank internal conversations about their efforts to sway the 2020 presidential election, even stating explicitly they wanted to be on the good side of a Biden-Harris administration, according to communications released by the House Judiciary Committee days before an election in which mainstream media are promoting censorship of conservative voices.
The Republican-led Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee published an 82- interim staff report Wednesday on how the FBI "prebunked" allegations about Biden family "corruption," and 641-page version with the full communications, providing the clearest evidence yet that tech platforms understood their role inevitably paved the way for the Democratic ticket.
"[W]hen we get hauled up to [Capitol] hill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. government] to plan for it," a member of Facebook’s Trust and Safety team messaged colleagues during a July 15, 2020, meeting among tech companies and feds including the FBI.
"Obviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else," U.K-based Nick Clegg, then-Facebook vice president of global affairs, told Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan as the Meta-owned company debated whether to stop demoting a New York Post expose on then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
"From the beginning, the platforms understood what the FBI was doing" even if "Big Tech may not have known that the FBI was priming them to censor a true story," the GOP report says of the internal communications committee staff obtained. Companies knew "their meetings with the U.S. government regarding online speech could very well influence the 2020 election."
A week before this year's election, prominent conservatives blasted The Washington Post for laying the groundwork to censor them through an analysis that claims their podcasts are superspreaders of "unfounded assertions including that the election will be rigged or stolen."
Ben Shapiro and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton posted the Post queries they received. Shapiro noted the financially hemorrhaging newspaper didn't specify what supposed misinformation he spread, and Fitton – flagged for his appearance on Charlie Kirk's show – scolded reporter Cat Zakrzewski for asking him after 5 p.m. with an 8 p.m. deadline.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan also accused YouTube of "censor[ing]" GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's interview with Joe Rogan, likely the nation's most influential podcaster, and sibling company Google elevating "material critical of the interview" in search results.
Jordan cited a New York Post report that said "YouTube users reported difficulty searching for the video" three days after it quickly racked up "tens of millions of views" Oct. 25 and that the full interview was "missing" from its trending videos page the day after.
He also argued YouTube admitted censoring the video by releasing a statement Oct. 28 that said "the original 3-hour interview didn't appear prominently" in "some searches" the day before.
While Rogan said Oct. 25 there was "no issue with YouTube censoring the trump episode," blaming a Spotify "glitch" for his decision to delist the YouTube interview "until it’s fixed," the podcast celebrity switched gears Oct. 29 and posted the entire interview on X, formerly Twitter, because "there's an issue with searching for this episode on YouTube."
The House Judiciary GOP report says the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force met more than two dozen times between Feb. 10 and Oct. 14, 2020, in one-on-one "bilateral meetings" with Big Tech companies including Google, then-Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft. The FITF's Russia unit chief told staff it resumed meetings with them this year.
The chief also said FITF's members knew the FBI had "Hunter Biden’s authenticated laptop" before the New York Post reported Oct. 14 on its "smoking-gun email" that said he introduced his father, the vice president at the time, to a top executive at Ukraine energy firm Burisma.
This is "consistent with other testimony" Judiciary and Weaponization received, the report said, citing FITF Section Chief Laura Dehmlow, who was then its China unit chief. Her predecessor, Brad Benavides, was also "certainly … aware" they had authenticated the laptop, she said.
Another set of meetings known as "USG-Industry" included FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Office of Intelligence & Analysis, Office of the Director of Intelligence, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft among others.
Clegg and Kaplan were on a Sept. 21, 2020, Facebook email that said "USG partners" believe Russian actors will conduct a "hack/leak operation" before the first debate eight days later, "likely involving real or manufactured evidence" of links between the Biden family and Burisma.
"FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge," according to internal Microsoft notes Oct. 14, 2020, the same day of the New York Post report.
Oct. 14, 2020, shows up repeatedly in the interim staff report, including Facebook's decision to demote the Post story, then hand-wringing over feared blowback for undoing demotion.
"Unwinding will likely leak and be a story (conversely, doing things that might be perceived as anti-conservative, like demoting the content, never seem to leak)," Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush, told Clegg among a series of WhatsApp messages.
Clegg agreed that "unwinding it now will unfortunately create more headaches than it’s worth." Kaplan clarified the problem was "we manually" demoted the story, because "if it were automatic, it would be sort of an easy call not to intervene."
Social media companies had "significant confusion around the Post article" during one-on-one FITF meetings Oct. 14, 2020, according to a paraphrase of the Russia unit chief's testimony. Quoting the chief, the report said he "felt [it] necessary to reach out to some of the more major companies" because an FBI analyst apparently confirmed the laptop's existence to Twitter.
The chief said he had a joint "follow-up discussion" with Twitter, Facebook, Google and Microsoft reps in which he shared a statement he "cleared" with superiors while "trying to skirt multiple policies and be within bounds legally," later telling GOP staff he told them something like "The FBI has nothing in its possession to suggest that the laptop is a hack or a leak."
He refused to answer any followup questions they had, saying his hands were tied by FBI policy even while acknowledging the agency "had more information" beyond knowing the laptop was not a hack or leak, the report says.
The companies nonetheless treated the laptop as a hack-and-leak, throttling the Post story so that "millions of Americans cast their presidential vote unaware of serious, credible allegations of misconduct levied against one of the two candidates," the GOP-led committee concludes.
"Today, these companies and their executives belatedly admit that their censorship was wrong," it says. "Although the FBI conditioned Big Tech to believe any allegations about [now first son]Hunter Biden were Russian disinformation, the social media companies are far from blameless."
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