White House approval needed for free speech

It’s shaping up to be the year for conspiracy fans. UFOs are confirmed by the U.S. military and now government censorship through social media platforms is acknowledged.

“We are in regular touch with social media platforms … We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a July 15 press conference.

She was speaking alongside Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy about information provided about COVID, treatments and vaccinations. Psaki outlined steps the Biden Administration wants to prevent “misinformation” from being posted on social media.

“They’re killing people,” President Biden said July 15 about his message to platforms like Facebook.

They are blaming posts on social media as the reason Biden didn’t meet his goal of having 70% of Americans receiving at least one vaccination shot before the Fourth of July.

“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” said Psaki, according to the White House press conference transcription. “All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook — ones that Facebook owns.”

If you disagree with the government information or prefer alternate information and post about it, they want you censored. They want to strip you of your right to free expression. They don’t want people to disagree with them.

I recommend people talk with their doctor about COVID vaccinations and treatments. They earned your trust in keeping you alive this long. If you don’t believe the federal government or the state, give them a try.

You can also find friends or family who have been vaccinated or were treated for COVID.

But, the massage from Psaki and Biden is that the end justifies the means. It’s apparent they don’t mind stripping people of a right to get their message across and they are willing to pressure social media companies to do it for them.

“It’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms. Sometimes it’s not accurate. And Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts,” Psaki said.

It’s impossible to not connect the Biden Administration’s message with conservatives claiming to be silenced for their messages. Prager University and others have filed lawsuits against YouTube, Facebook, Google, and other social media for freezing their accounts, limiting content reach, and slapping “misinformation” labels on their messages.

“Facebook has repeatedly shown that they have the levers to promote quality information. We’ve seen them effectively do this in their algorithm over low-quality information and they’ve chosen not to use it in this case,” Psaki said.

No kidding. They have done that?

The New York Post reported, “YouTube began censoring any content that disagreed with the error-prone World Health Organization, removing videos from emergency room doctors and podcasts from Stanford University neuroradiologists alike … Famously, you weren’t allowed to discuss if the virus came from the Wuhan Lab. In other words, the platforms have banned debate and inquiry itself.”

Yes, we’ve seen the censorship. Private companies and people defending censorship fall back to argue the First Amendment of the Constitution doesn’t apply because social media is not the government.

The First Amendment is our right to criticize the government, to disagree with it. We can voice our anger, our frustration, and curiosity at lapses in ethics, failures to treat people fairly, and involvement in wars. From protesting to promote civil rights to bad federal policy decisions, we get to be angry and express it.

We can discuss and debate it, unless we do it on social media and our president doesn’t like it.

– Bill Stevenson is the editor of the Whitman County Gazette. Email him at editor@wcgazette.com.