Government Secretly Worked with Universities, Big Tech to 'Censor Americans,' Congressional Report Reveals
The federal government colluded with Big Tech and academia ahead of the 2020 election to censor the free speech of American citizens online under the guise it was “disinformation,” according to a new report from the House Judiciary Committee.
The 103-page report, which was released on Monday, outlined how the committee said the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency colluded with Stanford University, numerous think tanks and popular social media platforms to censor everything from factual reporting to satire online.
Alleged guilty parties included Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube.
According to the report, “In the lead-up to the 2020 election, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public and lawmakers debated the merits of unprecedented, mid-election-cycle changes to election procedures. These issues, like all contemporary discourse about questions of political import, were extensively discussed on the world’s largest social media platforms — the modern town square.
“But as American citizens, including candidates in these elections, attempted to exercise their First Amendment rights on these platforms, their constitutionally protected speech was intentionally suppressed as a consequence of the federal government’s direct coordination with third-party organizations, particularly universities, and social media platforms.”
The committee claimed that government agents would flag opinions, statements and reports online with which they disagreed.
From there, backdoor channels that were available were used, so that the social media platforms could take down or limit the reach of some posts.
Per the report, the system was created as a way to “protect” Americans from foreign disinformation or misinformation, but it was actually used to target voters and candidates.
“While foreign states do attempt to conduct influence operations, the Committee’s and Select Subcommittee’s investigation has revealed that the true focus and purpose of the censors’ ‘election integrity’ work was to target the very Americans they claim to protect,” the report stated.
According to the report, “the federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions.”
People who were censored included former President Donald Trump, House and Senate Republicans, news agencies such as Newsmax, multiple high-profile conservative commentators, and the conservative satire website The Babylon Bee.
Others who were censored included an “untold number of everyday Americans of all political affiliations.”
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, shared some of the alarming findings on his X (formerly Twitter) page on Monday evening.
The federal government, disinformation “experts” at universities, Big Tech, and others worked together through the Election Integrity Partnership to monitor & censor Americans’ speech.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 6, 2023
And it didn’t stop there, here are some more accounts that were targeted:@NEWSMAX@michellemalkin@seanmdav@RubinReport@paulsperry_@tracybeanz@ChanelRion @JamesOKeefeIII
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 6, 2023
As always, more to come.
Read our report here: https://t.co/h69JCsqLCh
Stay tuned…
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 6, 2023
Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter last year, told podcaster Joe Rogan last week that before he bought the platform it was acting as “an arm of the government,” Newsweek reported.
Musk also said the platform was censoring conservatives at a ratio of 10 to one compared to liberals.
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