A number of emails seen by CNN — which uses them to make the case that the platform isn’t censoring enough — show that the Biden campaign repeatedly pressured Facebook to censor posts from the Trump campaign and its supporters about election integrity.
CNN’s own reporting confirms that Facebook changed its policies following the email exchange with Biden officials, yet goes on to quote Democrat activists who complain that the platform is still not censoring enough conservative content.
One post that the Biden campaign tried to have censored during the 2020 election was a video from Donald Trump Jr. in September 2020 calling for supporters to monitor early voting and counting boards.
Biden campaign officials tried to characterize the video as a call for violence, because Don Jr used the term “army” to refer to the volunteer effort, claims that were rebuffed by Facebook.
Via CNN:
After a Facebook official responded explaining the video did not violate the site’s policies that would warrant its removal, the Biden official responded with exasperation.
“The Trump Campaign has received the message that they may put videos on your platform saying that millions of fraudulent votes will be used to steal the election. And the solution to that is for ‘able-bodied people’ to enlist in an ‘army.’ So, their shrieks of fraud compound and their calls to ‘enlist’ multiply. Good gracious,” the Biden official wrote. “I struggle to believe that is the precedent you are intending to set.”
CNN goes on to admit that both Facebook and Twitter added “misinformation” labels to the video, and Facebook later instituted a new rule that would ban future videos like it.
The video of Trump Jr. was also posted to Twitter which also allowed the video to remain on its site. Both companies affixed labels to the videos pointing to accurate information about voting.
The following month, Facebook brought in a new policy against militarized language and polling locations, but the policy did not apply retrospectively, meaning Trump Jr.’s video could stay on the platform.
But this obvious kowtowing to Democrat pressure is apparently not enough for party activists, one of whom is quoted by CNN as calling Facebook — which has banned President Trump, potentially permanently, as well as numerous other high-profile conservatives — a “right-wing propaganda machine.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.