Social media’s ethical collapse under government pressure

Digital & Innovation: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that his company was coerced by the US Biden administration to censor and block content on Facebook and Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic. This revelation, made in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, paints a disturbing picture of government overreach and the stifling of free speech.

Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University was among the many scientists who found themselves gagged by big tech during the pandemic.

“Censorship becomes an issue when there are particular stresses… COVID created a stress that was a bit like a war phenomenon in the social media in the sense that it decided it had to manage the facts and had to support the government. Why?

“It did this without asking questions – every government around the world seems to be responding to COVID differently. Which one’s correct? Which one should we follow or not follow?” Professor Heneghan stated.

Professor Heneghan has since called for social media companies to be reined in by an independent arbitrator, to prevent suppression of scientific debate from happening again.

The influence of Facebook and other social media platforms as a global information source is immense, with many users believing the content they see is organically shared by their friends, family, and trusted sources. Zuckerberg’s admission exposes the reality of how manipulated that trust can be.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg confessed.

Elon Musk, never one to shy away from controversy, weighed in on the matter, calling it a clear “First Amendment violation” in a post on X, his social media platform. He doubled down, asserting that X is intended to support all viewpoints within legal bounds.

“If that doesn’t seem to be happening, please yell at me (ideally on X),” Musk provocatively added.

Jeffrey Tucker, Founder, Author and President at the Brownstone Institute, said “Zuckerberg’s admission has much larger implications than anyone has yet admitted. It provides a first official and confirmed peek into the greatest scandal of our times…the overriding of all free speech protections, and gaslighting as a way of life of government in our times.”

As these revelations unfold, Facebook is also battling an antitrust lawsuit, accused of using its power to crush competition through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. In a recent landmark ruling, a federal judge branded Google a monopoly, intensifying the scrutiny on big tech’s stranglehold on information and competition.

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