Biden Administration Getting Sued for Instructing Social Media Companies to Censor Opposing Views

Article Originally Posted on RedState.com

Sourced from: https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/08/05/biden-administration-getting-sued-for-instructing-social-media-companies-to-censor-opposing-views-n607762

It appears the White House might have been dabbling in some fascistic activity, according to a new lawsuit. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, is suing the Biden administration for instructing social media companies to suppress views and information on the COVID-19 pandemic that is not Democrat-approved.

NCLA issued a press release in which it claimed:

“Public statements, emails, and recent publicly released documents establish that the President of the United States and other senior officials in the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by directing social-media companies to censor viewpoints that conflict with the government’s messaging on Covid-19.”

“Social media platforms, acting at the federal government’s behest, repeatedly censored NCLA’s clients for articulating views on those platforms in opposition to government-approved views on Covid-19 restrictions,” the press release asserted.

NCLA argued that the censorship “was the direct result of the federal government’s ongoing campaign to silence those who voice perspectives that deviate from those of the Biden Administration.”

They continued:

Government officials’ public threats to punish social media companies that did not do their bidding demonstrate this linkage, as do emails from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to social media companies that only recently were made public.

Several news reports over the past year show that the Biden administration had been applying pressure on social media companies – especially Facebook – to censor content they deemed to be “misinformation” on the coronavirus. By now, we know that when the left uses the word, their definition is “any viewpoints that contradict ours.”

In July last year, RedState’s Brad Slager wrote about the White House trying to push Facebook to deplatform and otherwise silence certain accounts posting opinions of which they did not approve. “There was quite the furor created when Psaki spoke of the White House wanting to work with Facebook and target specific social media accounts they deem to be delivering dangerous posts regarding vaccines. They want Facebook to de-platform those accounts spreading claimed misinformation, and also they want these accounts taken down from other platforms,” he wrote.

Even in March of 2022, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on the social media platform to do more to suppress opposing viewpoints on the virus. In a memo, he demanded that tech companies send data and analysis on the spread of supposed misinformation on their platforms and provide information on “exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation.”

If the allegations are true – and news reports certainly suggest they are – the Biden administration is flirting with fascism in its efforts to force private companies to censor their users on the government’s behalf. It is a flagrant overreach that should be exposed as much as possible. State officials capitalize on our ignorance of their machinations and get away with this conduct because they don’t get any pushback, which is why we likely won’t hear much about this lawsuit from the activist media.