Judicial Watch: New Documents Reveal CDC Coordinated with Facebook on COVID Messaging and Alleged “Misinformation”

On Wednesday Judicial Watch announced the CDC coordinated with Facebook on COVID messaging and alleged “misinformation.”

The CDC and Facebook targeted media outlets, mostly conservative, that posted any factual information that differed from the CDC propaganda.

Via Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 2,469 pages of new documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reveal that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the COVID narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising given to the CDC by social media companies…

…The documents show collusion between the CDC and Big Tech on Covid-19 message and misinformation: 

  • In an email exchange beginning on January 26, 2020 with the subject, “Data for Good | CDC intros,” a Facebook representative sends the “FB coronavirus narrative” to the CDC. 

It states the following: 

Facebook is taking a three pronged approached to the global response for the coronavirus: 

Limit misinformation and other harmful content on our platforms.  Our third-party fact-checkers have been rating information on this topic as false, including the APPolitifactAFP Hong KongRapple IQ in the Philippines. As a result, we show people who come across that false content accurate information from our fact-checking partners and strong warning labels.  We also send notifications to people who already shared this content alerting them that it’s been fact checked. 

Provide accurate and helpful information on our platforms t our partners. Partners are already using our platforms to share accurate information about the situation, including ono Pages.  We have also provided ad credits to the World Health Organization and the Philippines’ Department of Health to enable them to run coronavirus education campaigns on Facebook in-region, which we will continue to do.  We’re continuing to explore additional steps we can take, including dedicated information modules on relevant search queries and improved search ranking.  

Empower partners with data tools. We’re sharing aggregated mobility data and high resolution density maps with various partners (e.g., National Tsinghua University (Taiwan); Harvard School oof Public Health) to help inform forecasting models for the spread of the virus as part of our broader Data for Good program.  We’re exploring doing this with a broader set of partners (e.g., WHO, US CDC) and also helping partners understand how people are talking about the issue online through tools like Crowdtangle to inform their efforts.   

This email exchange continues on showing more coordination on messaging between the CDC and Facebook.     

  • The CDC was given over $3.5 million of free advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. 

We now have a significant amount of evidence that Facebook, Twitter, and Google-YouTube have worked extensively with Democrats and government officials to silence conservative voices.

During the 2020 election cycle Dr. Shiva Ayyarurai discovered that Twitter has built a special portal offered to certain governmental entities so that government officials can flag and delete content they dislike for any reason, as part of what they call “Twitter Partner Status.”

But there is now evidence that Twitter is not the only tech giant engaging in this type of coordinated behavior to silence, censor, and discriminate against conservative voices.

We have found similar privileges given to Democrat government entities by the operatives at YouTube and Facebook.

TWITTER–

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, the man who invented email, ran for US Senate in Massachusetts as a Republican and made allegations of voter fraud on Twitter. These tweets were then deleted by the far-left tech giant.  Later it was discovered that they were deleted at the direction of government employees of the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office. 

Discovering this, Dr. Ayyadurai filed a federal lawsuit by himself, alleging that his federal civil rights were violated when the government silenced his political speech in order to affect an election.

Federal Judge Mark L. Wolf, a 1985 Reagan Appointee, set a hearing on pending motions for May 20, 2021 at 9:30AM EST. His court orders make it quite clear he is taking this case seriously and the court is highlighting several relevant cases that should give Twitter and its Big Tech bully buddies some pause.

By quoting these two cases, legal observers note, the judge is signaling that Twitter’s days of claiming it is a private company so as to avoid it’s clear oppression of conservative speech, banning scores of conservative journalists, and promotion of liberal views, may be coming to a close end: 

Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1928 (2019)

“A private entity can qualify as a state actor in a few limited circumstances-including, for example, … when the government compels the private entity to take a particular action…”

Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004 (1982)

“a State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State”

This case could spell the end of CDA 230.

CDA 230 is the provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that gives internet and social media companies legal immunity from lawsuits due to the content they publish. 

This provision in law gives companies like Facebook and Twitter a way to dismiss lawsuits, but it also gives them the ability to act with impunity so that their actions cannot be legally challenged. These companies have, according to their detractors, abused this immunity by suppressing dissident, and specifically conservative, views, viewpoints and journalism.

Because Dr. Ayyadurai did not argue about Twitter’s “Terms of Service” everything will instead hinge on the degree of interaction between Twitter and the state government of Massachusetts. 

 

FACEBOOK–

 

THIS IS HUGE: Oregon Government Orders Facebook to Remove Gateway Pundit Article on Republican Ballot Scandal – Facebook Complies — Despite Hundreds of Confirmed Testimonies

Gateway Pundit readers may recall a recent story we did that shed light on hundreds, possibly thousands, of Oregon voters who mysteriously had their party changed, most from Republican to Non Affiliated, without their permission, consent or knowledge, effectively denying them the right to vote in their party’s primary and disqualifying them from being Precinct Committee Persons.

We later found out the State Of Oregon was working with Facebook to delete all mentions of this story.

Facebook gave The Gateway Pundit a strike for posting this story even though we had 32 statements from different Oregon Republican voters to back up our report. 

Despite hundreds of people coming forward with similar stories about how they received a nonaffiliated ballot, and despite many screenshots from the Facebook group mentioned in our article, Facebook’s infamous “fact-checkers” deemed the story as “misinformation” at the request of the Oregon state government.

This is what people see when a link to the article comes up in their feed:

And here is the ‘strike’ notice The Gateway Pundit received from Facebook earlier today:

Lead Stories flagged The Gateway Pundit article and issued the strike as a “hoax alert.”

Lead stories author Alexis Tereszcuk did not contact any of the 30+ Oregon voters who said their party affiliation was changed.

Instead, Alexis spoke with the Oregon Secretary of State who denied there was any malfeasance.

She mentions that in her article at Lead Stories:

Alexis Tereszcuk, lists her bio as:

“Alexis Tereszcuk is a writer and fact checker at Lead Stories and an award-winning journalist who spent over a decade breaking hard news and celebrity scoop with RadarOnline and Us Weekly. As the Entertainment Editor, she investigated Hollywood stories and conducted interviews with A-list celebrities and reality stars. Alexis’ crime reporting earned her spots as a contributor on the Nancy Grace show, CNN, Fox News and Entertainment Tonight, among others.”

In her write up, Alexis went to the Oregon Secretary Of State for a statement who, rather than address the concerns of all of the disenfranchised voters, Oregon Secretary of State spokeswoman Andrea Chiapella blames the citizens for not responding to some postcard they were supposed to get that automatically registers people as nonaffiliated.

From the Lead Stories article:

Did Oregon change hundreds of Republican ballots to non-partisan, thus denying Republican voters the right to participate in the state’s primary? No, that’s not true: Oregon voters who received the non-partisan ballots because they never took the second step of declaring a party affiliation, a spokeswoman for the Oregon secretary of state told Lead Stories. The procedure would affect Democrats, as well as Republicans.

The story went viral after an article cited a group of people on Facebook claiming they did not receive a Republican ballot to vote in the May 19, 2020, primary and instead were given “non-partisan” ballots against their wishes. The Oregon secretary of state denied changing citizens’ party registration and told LeadStories.com that the claims that their party affiliation was changed against their wishes is “misinformation.”

Oregon secretary of state spokeswoman Andrea Chiapella denied that there was any malfeasance with regard to party registration being changed:

“Statements online that say that party has been changed against their wishes is misinformation and our Elections Director is trying to work with Facebook and Twitter to have it deemed as such and removed.”

That’s right. The government is now openly colluding with Facebook and Twitter to remove all mentions of this balloting scandal. 

 

YouTube–

And now earlier today Judicial Watch announced that YouTUbe was working with Democrat officials in California to censor their content.

‘Violation of First Amendment’ – Judicial Watch YouTube Video Censored at Request of California Government Officials

This is criminal behavior by the tech giants to limit free speech and political speech in the United States.

For years we assumed this was taking place. Now we have proof.

Photo of author
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft's articles here.

 

Thanks for sharing!