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Aug. 15, 2021 - Epoch Times

21:05

White House Admits to working with Big Tech to Censor "Disinformation" | Facts Matter

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	Good evening.
	Just yesterday, Democrats in the House of Representatives blocked a bill which would have declassified documents related to the true origins of COVID. And so now, I guess we'll never know.
	Meanwhile, over at the White House, they just made a fairly astonishing revelation.
	They just revealed the fact that they are, in fact, flagging disinformation posts for Facebook.
	That's right, the federal government is sending Facebook lists of posts that they deem unfit to be viewed.
	And in response, a class-action lawsuit has just been filed against them, saying that they are essentially violating Americans' First Amendment rights.
	And lastly, over in Arizona, county officials have been refusing to hand over the routers needed for an election audit.
	However, the state Senate is now trying to hold these county officials in contempt.
	Will they succeed?
	Well, let's go through that together.
	This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
	And now let's begin today's discussion by talking about censorship.
	But actually, just as a quick aside, although it's a bit related to censorship, right there at the top of the description box is a link to Epic TV, which is our brand new no censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epic Times video programs like The Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, Life and Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, Life and Times, China in Focus, as well as our show Facts Matter.
	And on there, we'll publish exclusive episodes that you will not be finding here on YouTube.
	Again, that link to Epic TV will be right there at the top of the description box.
	I hope you check it out.
	And now, let's really talk about the government and big tech colluding to censor Americans.
	One week ago, the White House made a fairly astonishing announcement.
	During a press conference, Jen Psaki, who is the White House press secretary, she told reporters that the Biden administration has been flagging posts for Facebook if they contain what she called disinformation.
	Here's specifically what she said.
	We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.
	We're working with doctors and medical experts who are popular with their audience with accurate information.
	So we're helping get trusted content out there.
	Again, I just want to reiterate what she said, and this is a direct quote.
	We are blocking problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.
	Now, the very next day, a reporter at the White House asked Ms.
	Psaki to clarify, and here was her response.
	First, it shouldn't come as any surprise that we're in regular touch with social media platforms, just like we're in regular touch with all of you and your media outlets.
	About areas where we have concern, we're regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing.
	After she made that statement, she then went on to give an example of what she called a false narrative that the vaccine causes infertility, and she said that this was one example of content that they are flagging.
	Then, after discussing misinformation a bit more during that press conference, she said that senior staff members over at the White House have been in contact with Facebook, giving them recommendations on how they can do better, which includes this recommendation right here.
	You shouldn't be banned from one platform and not others if you are providing misinformation out there.
	So those are some of the steps that we think should be constructive for public health for public information.
	And so it seems essentially she is recommending that if you are blocked on Facebook, Now, although what she said was couched within the context of public health and keeping people safe from the virus, this is pretty much uncharted territory.
	I mean, the federal government is now openly admitting to collaborating with big tech.
	And this is something that raises a very big question.
	Because when posts on social media are typically censored, a lot of people defend social media companies by saying that they are private actors.
	They are private businesses.
	And so if they censor people, that's not a violation of those people's First Amendment rights necessarily, because it is not the government who's actually censoring them.
	However, here's the big question.
	What if, behind the scenes, the government, the federal government, is pressuring these social media companies to take down Americans' posts?
	What if it's the government that's actually pushing for this censorship?
	Does that violate freedom of speech?
	And as I'm sure you know, this type of censorship that people experience on social media goes well beyond the virus.
	And in fact, it predates the virus by many years.
	And given all of this, some Republican lawmakers have taken the opportunity to demand answers from the federal government, specifically from the Biden administration.
	In fact, just two days ago, Anthony Biggs, who is a congressman from Arizona, he sent this letter to Joe Biden, which was then co-signed by 12 additional members of Congress.
	We were, of course, able to get a copy of this letter.
	And in it, the lawmakers are demanding answers from the White House regarding their work with Facebook in flagging posts that they deem to be disinformation.
	Here's specifically what part of this letter says.
	Quote, The letter then went on to further criticize the administration for making determinations as to The letter then went on to further criticize the administration for making determinations as to what qualifies as Here's specifically what it said.
	Quote, Senior administration officials should not be making recommendations to private companies on how they can stop open and free debate.
	The government should not determine which sources are quality information sources.
	That is a tactic of authoritarians around the world who seek to silence opposition by labeling them as crackpots and liars.
	The government is not the arbiter of truth and must stop seeking to prevent people from speaking in the public square.
	The letter then went on to ask seven specific questions of the administration which include Who in the federal government has been working with Facebook to monitor American speech?
	What criteria is the White House or the federal government using when determining if a post spreads misinformation?
	Are you creating a list of those whose speech differs from yours?
	And there's several other questions as well.
	Now, in this letter, the lawmakers requested a response from the White House no later than August 1st, in about two weeks from now.
	Although there doesn't appear to be any enforcement mechanism compelling the Biden administration to actually respond, And so who knows whether they'll actually get back to these lawmakers.
	However, there is something that they will likely have to respond to.
	And that is this right here, a new class action lawsuit.
	This lawsuit, which was filed by a man, an American man, who claims that his posts were censored, alleges that Americans are in fact being censored at the behest of the Biden administration, which then in turn violates their First Amendment right.
	Now this new lawsuit, by the way, inside of it, it actually includes some of the quotes from Jen Psaki, the ones we discussed earlier.
	And now we here at the Epoch Times, we actually got a chance to speak with the plaintiff in this case, Mr.
	Richard Rogalinski, and here's what he said about the lawsuit.
	For your reference, by the way, as a little bit of background on this case, Mr.
	Rogalinski said that Facebook had flagged some of his posts about the virus as being false and even hid some of them from public view, meaning that people were not allowed to see them.
	Here's specifically what the lawsuit says on this matter.
	Quote, They argued that this relationship between Facebook and the They argued that this relationship between Facebook and the government means that Facebook can be sued as a state actor.
	In fact, we here at the Epoch Times got a chance to speak with the lawyer who is handling this case, and here's how he explained it.
	We see this as a slippery slope that the government is now involved in telling Facebook how to censor.
	I think Facebook and social media has traditionally said, well, we're a private company, and so we can control what's on our platform.
	But what you've seen from the Biden administration is a material change to that position.
	Because now you have the federal government engaged with these platforms, identifying not only content, but specific people to censor.
	And I think you run down that authoritarian or that Chinese Communist Party approach to governance that, frankly, we are not set up for, and most of the people that live here don't approve of.
	Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Facebook for comment on this case, but we have yet to hear back.
	Regardless, if you would like to read more about the censorship, about the government's involvement, or about the pushback that's occurring with these statements and this lawsuit, all those links will be down there in the description box below this video for you to check out.
	And now, before we move on over and talk about the declassification of documents related to the origins of COVID-19, I would like to take a quick second and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
	That's right, Roman.
	Although today we are not in the sound studio, we are in the kitchen.
	And we have a new type of sponsor.
	It's a book.
	It's actually a very good book.
	It's called Terms of Service.
	They sent me a copy to read and I've been going through it for myself.
	I'm about a third of the way through.
	And you know what?
	I didn't have any expectations, but still it sort of blew them out of the water.
	It's a dystopian Orwellian type of novel.
	And you know, it hit upon a question that was really timely.
	It's exactly what I was thinking about recently.
	Now, big tech, there's sort of two things that big tech is doing simultaneously.
	On the one side, they are censoring us.
	They're censoring how we speak, how we express ourselves.
	And in that process, they're inching closer and closer to actually censoring the thoughts within our own heads, right?
	So that's one thing.
	But then on the other side, the artificial intelligence is actually moving us in a certain direction.
	Based on the content that it recommends, based on the events that it recommends, based on the advertising that it shows, it's actually moving us in a certain direction, right?
	And so this book, I'm not going to get into the plot in case you are actually going to read it, but it explores the question of, as artificial intelligence gets more and more advanced, where is this ultimately leading us to?
	Where is this leading society to?
	So, again, phenomenal book.
	I'm recommending it not only because they sent me a copy and because they sponsored our episode, but because the book is generally very good.
	If you want to find it for yourself, you can search for Terms of Service on Amazon.
	Buy a copy there.
	Or if you don't want to give any commission to Jeff Bezos, you can go to craigwstanfield.com forward slash Roman and buy a copy directly from the author.
	I'll actually throw a link to that direct website there in the description box below.
	And again, Mr.
	Stanfield, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
	And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
	And now, let's talk about the origins of the virus.
	Or rather, let's not talk about it.
	Because just yesterday, House Democrats blocked a bipartisan bill which would have declassified documents related to the origins of COVID. Specifically, what actually happened was that yesterday, House Democrats, they blocked consideration of a bill which would have required the U.S. Director of National Intelligence to declassify most information on the role that the Wuhan Institute of Virology played in the outbreak.
	Now to give you a bit of background on this bill, back in May, so about two months ago, the U.S. Senate, they unanimously passed this bill, which is called the COVID-19 Origin Act.
	Meaning, and it's kind of amazing if you think about it, that at a time when Democrats and Republicans can't seem to agree on anything, they all agreed on this bill, at least in the U.S. Senate.
	Now, Congressman Brad Wenstrup, who is a Republican from Ohio, he was the one who helped bring this bill over to the House.
	And in so doing, here is what he said of the proposal.
	However, unlike in the U.S. Senate, when the bill was voted on in the House...
	It was blocked.
	The final vote was 216 against and 207 for, and so the measure did not pass.
	Now thus far, it's not exactly clear why they made that decision.
	In fact, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Democrat leadership, but we have yet to hear back.
	Regardless, it is worth noting that the House Democrats' decision to vote against this measure, it came at the same time, literally almost at the same time, that Chinese Communist Party officials said that they would not comply with a second WHO probe into the origins of the pandemic.
	And to this day, as you might know, the Chinese regime claims that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human over at the Wuhan wet market.
	That's the story that they're sticking to.
	Now how exactly is this statement from the Chinese Communist Party related to the House Democrats' decision to kill this bill?
	Well, that's not exactly clear, but I just thought that the timing of these two was coincidental enough to mention.
	Now, here at the Epoch Times, we will be continuing to follow up with the Democrats.
	We'll be waiting to hear anything back from them, the reasoning for why they decided to vote down this bill, and we'll let you know right away once anything comes of it.
	Hopefully, we'll hear something back by next week.
	Otherwise, if you would like to read more about this bill, about the COVID origins bill, the link to that will be in the description box below this video for you to check out, which, by the way, is that same little description box that is right below that like button, which I hope you take a quick moment to smash, because...
	Honestly, it goes without saying that videos that are like this, talking honestly and openly and transparently about what is happening in this world without following some kind of a forced narrative, are routinely censored and throttled by big tech giants like YouTube.
	However, when you smash that like button below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
	We already discussed in a previous episode how officials in Maricopa County have been refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena.
	That subpoena, which was, by the way, issued seven months ago, mandates that the county hand over all election-related materials in order for them to be audited.
	And among those materials that they were told to hand over were the county routers.
	Now the auditors who are currently working on investigating what happened during the 2020 election, they say that they need those routers in order to assess whether there was any digital traffic to or from the voting machines on election day.
	However, even though a judge has already ruled that these subpoenas are valid and must be followed, Maricopa County has, to this day, which is again seven months from the original issuance of these subpoenas, Here's specifically how the lawyers for the county, here's how they explained it in a letter.
	The county's routers were not used solely for election-related activities.
	They were used by the entire county.
	Providing them or their virtual images could jeopardize the security of law enforcement data and programs as well as Maricopa County citizens' financial, healthcare, and other private information.
	However, according to the president of the company which is leading the IT part of the Arizona election audit, Mr.
	Ben Cotton, he said that this reasoning doesn't make any sense.
	Because according to him, routers don't actually keep any information in them.
	The only thing that you can actually find inside of routers are the logs.
	The logs which would tell you what was sent and received during a given time.
	It's just basically a traffic report.
	Here's specifically what he said on the matter during a Senate hearing.
	So when you think about a router, think about someone delivering the mail to your mailbox.
	That router is simply the mail carrier.
	On a standard envelope that you might mail to your mother, you're going to put your return address, you're going to put the address that it's going to, and then you put that in the mailbox.
	The mail carrier looks at that, they know where to route that, and they will simply route that letter so it's delivered in the mailbox of your mother.
	With a router, it's very similar.
	For each packet of data that you have, you have an address where it's going to, you have an address of where it came from, so that any response can come right back to that system.
	But what you don't have is the actual content or the letter that's contained in the envelope within the router itself.
	Now, regardless of who is right or who is wrong in regards to these routers, there is still the case that the Senate issued subpoenas for them, and the subpoenas have been ignored for the past seven months by county officials.
	Now, what's funny is that if common plebs like you or me ignored subpoenas from our local state Senate, there would likely be consequences.
	We would likely be in jail.
	However, the officials over Maricopa County have yet to face any sort of consequences at all.
	And it looks like that will continue to be the case.
	Because what happened was that just yesterday, the Arizona State Senate was not able to hold Maricopa County officials in contempt due to a single Republican senator who defected.
	Now to give you a bit of background here, the Arizona State Senate is currently held by Republicans.
	However, their majority is pretty slim.
	After the last election in 2020, the makeup of the State Senate in Arizona is 16 Republicans to 14 Democrats.
	And so, if they don't vote in lockstep, things just don't work out.
	And that is exactly what happened yesterday.
	Senate Republicans wanted to pass a resolution which would hold the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in contempt for failing to comply with the subpoena.
	Here's what part of that resolution said.
	They have repeatedly and willfully delayed and obstructed a vital and duly authorized investigation by the Arizona Senate.
	Now, if that measure was actually passed, it would have enabled the sergeant at arms to go in and arrest the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for contempt.
	However, Paul Boyer, who is an Arizona state senator, he's a Republican, he decided that he's not going to vote for the resolution, making it impossible for the measure to pass.
	Because if they were to vote on it, it would be a tie with 15 votes in favor of the resolution and 15 votes against.
	Here's what Karen Phan, who is the Arizona Senate president, here's how she described the situation.
	Senator Boyer agreed to proceed with the audit, but when the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors refused to cooperate, Boyer would not vote with us for the resolution of contempt, which leaves us one vote short.
	Now, in explaining why he voted against this measure, here's what Senator Boyer had to say.
	And by the way, just for your reference, this is actually the second time that Senator Boyer voted against this resolution.
	Because back in February, he likewise voted with the Democrats.
	Now, since the resolution can't pass and the County Board of Supervisors continues to not cooperate with the Senate, the big question is what is going to happen next?
	Well, here's how Ken Bennett, who is the audit liaison, and he's the one who's constantly interacting with county officials, here's how he laid it out.
	Every time I've tried to interact with the folks at the Elections Department, I've been told that I need to deal with the county attorney's office.
	And most of the time I've received kind of the answer that we gave you everything we're going to give you.
	Furthermore, when Ken Bennett was asked how people can help, He said that people can call the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and ask them to be more cooperative.
	He added this.
	That feels a little weak, but that's kind of where we're at.
	Now, the big problem with the county refusing to comply and refusing to hand over the routers is that this can cause the final audit report, the final election audit report, to potentially be incomplete.
	In fact, here's how Warren Peterson, who is an Arizona state senator, he's a Republican, here's how he described the gravity of the situation.
	If the materials and information sought aren't handed over, it will be an incomplete audit.
	It is unfortunate that the county has been recalcitrant.
	That doesn't breed trust.
	It slows things down.
	It makes things difficult.
	Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Maricopa County for comment, and they emailed us back saying that they will not hand over any more materials without fresh subpoenas.
	Here's specifically what part of their email said.
	We will have a response about other demands if and when Senate leadership produces more subpoenas.
	And so, it looks like, pending any further developments, the county officials are in fact able to get away with not complying with a Senate subpoena.
	Must be nice to be a government official, because once again, if it was you or me that refused to comply, I think the consequences would be quite different.
	Regardless, if you would like to read more about what's happening over in Arizona, the links to everything that we've just discussed will be in the description box below this video, free to check out.
	And lastly, as we've already discussed in several previous episodes on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, coincidentally, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
	We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episode, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled, and I'm sure that was just a coincidence of timing.
	However, we here at the Epic Times, we didn't just take it lying down, and instead we took action and we created something very cool.
	It's called Epic TV. It's our brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epic Times video programs, like The Larry Elder Show, American Thought Leaders, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, China in Focus, Life and Times, and of course our show, Facts Matter, and once again we publish exclusive episodes on there that frankly I just don't feel comfortable publishing here on YouTube due to the extreme levels of censorship.
	So again, that link will be right there at the top of the description box.
	I hope you check it out.
	I hope you go to Epic TV and subscribe because that way you can really join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition and without any thought to censorship.
	Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
	Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this kind of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while YouTube still allows it.
	Also, if you have an Instagram account, I'd highly recommend you follow me at EpicTimesRoman.
	I regularly publish memes as well as behind-the-scenes research.
	Also, by the way, we have a newsletter.
	So just in case anything ever happens here on YouTube, you can subscribe to the newsletter and you will always get notified of any new videos that we publish.
	The link to that newsletter will be in the description box below.
	I hope you subscribe to that as well.
	We don't spam you, but we do just send you updates about what we're working on.
	And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.

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