White House Urged Meta to Censor WhatsApp Messages to Combat Vaccine Hesitancy

Recently disclosed emails suggest that the Joe Biden administration pressured Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, to restrict messages on WhatsApp to combat COVID-19 misinformation that could lead to vaccine hesitancy.

An assistant to the president, Rob Flaherty, messaged Meta executives in March 2021 to inquire about how the company was working to reduce “harm.” He expressed concern about how Meta was measuring the reduction of harmful messages and how the company knew what kinds of messages it had cut down on. Flaherty and Andrew Slavitt, a former top White House COVID-19 adviser, had been urging Meta executives to take action against COVID-19 misinformation, regardless of whether the information was accurate.

Meta’s response indicated that, without being able to see the content of messages on WhatsApp, the company was not able to measure the prevalence and reduction of particular types of content. However, the company was taking steps to address alleged misinformation by controlling the spread of misinformation through product interventions such as labels and limiting message forwards in group chats. WhatsApp also banned accounts engaged in mass marketing, scamming, or exploiting COVID-19 misinformation. Additionally, WhatsApp had introduced a feature that enabled users to conduct a web search to double-check forwarded messages and receive answers from a fact-checking bot.

The case came to light after an alleged attempt by the government to suppress the legal rights of Americans who have opposing views, thereby infringing their First Amendment rights. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, one of the plaintiffs, described the situation as “egregious and unlawful viewpoint censorship by the White House, FBI, CDC, CISA, and other agencies.”