Republicans are releasing internal communications from tech executives

Tech executives release internal communications: Murthy v. Missouri, the case of Facebook, Amazon, Meta and other social media outlets, and what the media had to say about the case

Conservatives are telling a story about Biden, covid-19, and moderation on social media platforms in both the court of public opinion and the Supreme Court. A new report that is set to be released by a House subcommittee focuses on allegations that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in its backchannel communications with platforms such as Facebook.

That the communications occurred in the first place is not illegal, but if they raise the level of influence, that would be.

There are previously private communications between top executives at Meta that show how they handled their most pointed and public critique from the country’s leader.

There was no comment from Amazon, Meta, or any of the other companies. The White House and Democratic Judiciary Committee staff didn’t reply when they were contacted by The Verge, but they did reply in time for publication.

This matters because there is a Supreme Court case against the Biden administration and it is still pending at this time. Murthy v. Missouri is all about where to draw the line between (entirely legal) persuasion from the government versus (illegal) coercion. The Jordan report is more aligned with the arguments in the case after the shift in language.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Select Subcommittee Ranking Member Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat who represents the US Virgin Islands, accused Republicans of holding the hearing now as a “last ditch effort to influence the Supreme Court opinion in the case of Murthy v. Missouri.”

The staff gathered hundreds of hours of testimony showing that social media companies only took action if they violated their internal policies.

But Republicans, Plaskett said, have repeatedly declined to make the testimony public and declined to give Democrats “hundreds of hours of video taken during those investigations.” The transcript of a tech executive’s interview was not entered into the record. Jordan said that they planned to release all of these once they had talked to everyone and their counsel.

Ultimately, this question — whether any of the pressure from the White House was coercion — is something the Supreme Court will be answering in the coming months.

Source: Republicans release tech executives’ internal communications

Facebook executives weighed in with the Sandberg response to the “Biden walk-back” on a lab leak theory’s false claims by third parties

Before Biden’s walk-back, however, Facebook executives were incensed by the comment. It was the day that Biden said something, and Sandberg wrote in a message, “Ugh on Biden today.” The last 24 hours have seen a very dishonest and cynical behavior from the WH.

Zuckerberg chimed in, asking, “Can we include that the WH put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory?” It was always do more generic pressure on the theory according to Clegg, but he threw cold water on it.

Zuckerberg wrote that the new development “seems like a good reminder that when we compromise our standards due to pressure from an administration in either direction, we’ll often regret it later.”

And another thought. Did Trump say things this irresponsible? Everyone would go nuts if Trump blamed his govt for the private company’s problems.

In June 2021, a trust and safety executive explained in an email to Zuckerberg that some of the third-party fact-checkers they relied on either rescinded their false rating or acknowledged uncertainty about the lab leak theory. The executive says that the company had removed posts including any of five claims rated as false by its fact-check network in February 2021, including that the disease was man-made or engineered by a government or country. At the time, that decision came in response to continued public pressure and tense conversations with the new Administration, which would have been the Biden administration.

But, the trust and safety executive added, Zuckerberg had also asked the team back in February to review the decision further into the year “to determine if we should revert to reduce & inform” rather than remove the posts.

Source: Republicans release tech executives’ internal communications

YouTube vs. Facebook: What happened when you first saw the White House and what you didn’t want to know about vaccine hesitancy?

Conservatives wont mind zeroing in on the statement that “compromise our standards due to pressure from an administration”, but the following clause may imply that Meta was pressured initially into flagging the lab leak hypothesis as misinformation. When you are free to make a purchase, buyer’s remorse is possible.

The committee claims to have reviewed tens of thousands of emails and other documents that they say show that the White House wanted companies to suppress free speech.

That framing is significant since it’s also the focus of a major Supreme Court case expected to be decided by the end of June that will have major ramifications on the federal government’s ability to communicate with social media firms.

According to the report, a new proposed policy on vaccine safety content was shared by YouTube in September 2021, after a long engagement with the administration. Back in July of 2015, the team at YouTube didn’t commit to a Biden administration official to any new policies and instead replied to a question about the low reach of “borderline” content. A member of the YouTube policy team asked the White House official about dates to preview and get feedback on the new policy to remove content that could misleading people on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. On September 29th, after the policy was released, Flaherty apologizes for failing to respond to the previous message but says he “saw the news” and that “at first blush, seems like a great step.”

During arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, Justice Elena Kagan was skeptical of a monthslong gap between the Biden administration asking Facebook not to distribute a post about vaccine hesitancy and the platform allegedly blocking a health group as a result.

We know Jordan, who chairs the committee and Subcommittee that released this report, is invested in the Supreme Court case because he attended the oral arguments. An opinion is expected by the end of June. The House Republicans say in a report that they are working on new legislation that would allow people to file lawsuits against the executive branch for censoring their speech.

Leah Feiger. There is an author and a contributor of the story we’re about to dig into. Welcome to me, Tess. You’ve spent weeks studying the way these groups are organizing on Facebook. What did you think when you first started looking into this?

The person is called #LeahFeiger. Daithai Gilbert is the son of David Gilbert. Tess Owen is @misstessowen. Send your letter to us at politicslab@ WIRED.com. The WIRED Politics Lab newsletter is essential for political news.

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