Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is demanding Big Tech judge so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation” ahead of the vote. However, Schiff only eight years ago spread the most defamatory poll misconceptions, the Russia collusion hoax.
In a letter sent Monday to the CEO’s of many tech giants, including Meta, X, TikTok, and Google, Schiff demanded to know how the companies had judge free speech in order to save “democracy”.
The email begins with the statement” We write to your websites as anxious Members of Congress, seeking more information about how you prepared for and respond to the spread of misinformation and disinformation.” Businesses must redouble their efforts in response to the rapid growth of the systems on social media platforms in order to overcome issues that threaten our democracy.
The text cites a review from NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights that says “distribution of false, cruel, and violent material” is a” danger” to this year’s vote.
Schiff continues to mourn that platforms “have not increased their accountability for outside groups who can assist in monitoring vote information.” Schiff asks the organizations whether they will change their policies between now and Election Day and how they will handle people who spread “mis- and deception” “differently” than “ordinary people”.
The text was signed by seven of Schiff’s Democrat acquaintances.
However, Schiff’s years of experience as the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking member caused the internet to learn false information and untrue complaints about former president Donald Trump’s alleged participation with Russia.
Schiff claimed on MSNBC in 2017 that” there is more than anecdotal evidence today” linking the Trump campaign to Russia. He later claimed to have seen” the kind of information” that a grand jury would prefer to view. Schiff likewise told CNN there was “damning” evidence of collusion.
Eventually, it was discovered that Carter Page, a former Trump campaign worker, was subjected to a key FISA court monitoring warrant. According to the record from former chairman of the Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, the FBI never made it known to the judge that Christopher Steele was a hacker. He was responsible for the discredited” Steele Dossier.” Schiff issued a counter-memo in 2018 that” rejected reality”, as explained by my colleague Margot Cleveland.
Schiff falsely claimed the “FBI and DOJ officials did not’ misuse’ the]FISA ] process, remove material information, or disrupt this important tool to spy on the Trump campaign”.
When social media users began demanding Republicans# ReleaseTheMemo ( the Nunes note, to be clear ), Schiff launched a strategy that called for big tech firms to “expose” and “deactivate” the records, falsely asserting the transactions were linked to foreign workers. Matt Taibbi later discovered that Twitter executives could not find “any substantial exercise connected to Russia.”
Despite Schiff’s frequent assertions that he had seen “damning” proof of such cooperation, a report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller afterwards found no evidence of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Schiff’s letter comes shortly after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook was under pressure from the federal government to censor free speech in the run-up to the 2020 election. Zuckerberg described how FBI agents collaborated with Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. A dump of Russian “propaganda,” according to Zuckerberg’s later assertion to podcast host Joe Rogan, was previously reported by officials and was intended to include the laptop story. But Zuckerberg, in his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, said the report on the laptop was” not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should n’t have demoted the story”.
Zuckerberg also told the House Judiciary Committee that” senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did n’t agree”.
Zuckerberg wrote,” I regret that we were n’t more open about it.” ” I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we would n’t make today. If something similar happens again, we’re prepared to intervene.
Misinformation and disinformation are not actually real, as my colleague John Daniel Davidson pointed out; instead, they are” Soviet terms that relate to psychological warfare.”
For more election news and updates, visit , electionbriefing.com.
The Federalist’s election correspondent, Brianna Lyman. With a degree in international political economy, Brianna received her degree from Fordham University. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2