Leaked emails show that the White House was intent on pressuring messaging platform WhatsApp to censor private conversations about ‘vaccine skepticism’.

The revelation is perhaps even more alarming than the Biden administration’s efforts to shut down dissent on public social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, because the lobbying pertained to information exchanged between as a few as two people.

The leaked emails were featured in a Substack article written by journalist and author David Zweig.

From March 2021 onwards, Rob Flaherty, the Biden White House’s Director of Digital Strategy, demanded WhatsApp owner Meta explain the actions it was taking to intervene in private conversations about the COVID vaccine between WhatsApp users.

“If you can’t see the message, I’m genuinely curious—how do you know what kinds of messages you’ve cut down on?” Flaherty asked.

Flaherty and Andrew Slavitt, then the White House Senior Advisor on the Covid Response, wanted to set up phone calls with a Meta executive a “couple of times per week” if necessary to oversee the censorship.

“I care mostly about what actions and changes you’re making to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse,” Flaherty wrote on April 9, 2021.

“I still don’t have a good, empirical answer on how effective you’ve been at reducing the spread of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters,” he added.

The White House wanted non-public messages about vaccine skepticism to be brought “under control,” a chilling interference in private encrypted conversations.

“What, exactly, was he hoping to get Meta to do?” asks Zweig.

“It was obvious from the start that WhatsApp’s interface didn’t allow for the granular control Flaherty appeared to desire. And his smiley face response suggests he well understood this. Yet he kept badgering the Meta executives anyway.”

Meta was seemingly unable to satisfy the Biden administration’s demands, perhaps wary that directly censoring people’s ability to communicate with their own friends and family would have represented a massive public relations disaster.

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Leftist ‘thinker’ Sam Harris declared last week that conservatives should not be allowed to voice their opinions on issues such as the war in Ukraine, climate change, or vaccine safety.

Making the remarks on a podcast, Harris’ argument is that conservative commentators are making a living out of “not caring” and thus should not be allowed to influence anyone else’s opinion.

“We’re swimming in a sea of misinformation, where you’ve got people who are moving the opinions of millions of others, who should not have an opinion on these topics,” Harris proclaimed.

He continued, “There is no scenario in which you should be getting your opinion about vaccine safety or climate change, or the war in Ukraine, or anything else that we might want to talk about from Candace Owens, right?”

“She’s not a relevant expert on any of those topics. And what’s more, she doesn’t seem to care, right?” Harris continued, adding “And she’s living in a culture that has amplified that not caring into a business model, an effective business model, right? That is something very Trumpian about all that.”

Watch:

This is all very rich coming from someone who previously admitted he supported the suppression of reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop immediately prior to the election, if it would prevent Donald Trump from being reelected.

Sam Harris Offers Feeble ‘Clarification’ After Bizarre Comments About Trump

Indeed, Harris went as far as saying “Hunter Biden could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.”

'Hunter Biden could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.'

Sam Harris on the suppression of Biden laptop news on the eve of the election. https://t.co/FnzU8FfXat

— Pandem(on)ical Order of Good Cheer (@EmpireinWinter) November 22, 2022

Harris later pathetically claimed that the New York Post’s reporting on the story was accurate only “by accident.”

Video: Sam Harris Claims It Was An “Accident” That NY Post Was Right About Hunter Biden Laptop

After he received backlash for the remarks, Harris rage quit Twitter and is still absent from the platform, refusing to even entertain debate or opinions antithetical to his own:

Sam Harris Rage Quits Twitter Days After Claiming Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Right “By Accident”

Given that she was used as an example by Harris, Candace Owens responded:

You heard him! Unless you are an “expert”you are not at all entitled to have an opinion about anything.
Even the drugs that those who are motivated by profit are telling you to take.
Even the manner in which your hard earned money is being spent overseas.
No opinions, please! https://t.co/EnQzrNj1OX

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 15, 2023

I didn’t go to Stanford University and yet I have an opinion.
That is Sam Harris’ obsession.
He cannot compute how people outside of the academia have any success. https://t.co/fhf6cmDTm0

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) March 15, 2023

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There are some that say not much was learned or gained from the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government this past week as politicians sparred over the meaning of the release of the Twitter Files.  Democrats in particular seemed adamant that they would not discuss the actual contents of the files or their implications.  Their apparent goal?  To disrupt exploration of the information and to attack the messengers.

There might not have been many new revelations coming from the subcommittee, but what the public did learn was that the political left is extremely hostile to facts, evidence and the truth.  If you didn’t already know that by now, the hearing with Matt Taibbi made it abundantly clear.  

Leftist members of the committee proceeded into a tirade when Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were called to testify on their participation in the publishing of the files, attacking everything from their credentials to their intentions, and even demanding they reveal information on their private sources.  Here is the real information the Dems did not want to talk about:

It is well known that Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Elon Musk have long been liberal leaning in their politics, yet the accusations from Democrats asserted some form of conspiracy between Musk, Taibbi and Republicans, with some members even insinuating an effort to “undermine democracy.”  What right did they have to take this position?

They claim that Musk and Taibbi are hiding data that shows Trump and Republicans were making requests to censor Twitter users as well.  In other words, they assert there is a “conspiracy” to protect Republicans while denouncing Democrats.

But what are the facts here?

Taibbi has said on numerous occasions that there were requests from Republicans as well as Democrat officials for accounts to be censored or blocked.  He never hid this from anyone.  This argument is a cover, a distraction from two separate issues:

First, the government should NEVER be involved in censorship requests of the public for any reason.  It doesn’t matter which party is making the requests, and a criminal investigation should be pursued for any officials involved in legitimate 1st Amendment violations.  

Second, who did Twitter actually censor?  Which requests did they actually honor?  The vast majority of accounts censored by the previous Twitter management were conservative accounts, conservative news sources and posts with content that ran contrary to Democrat narratives.  Republicans like Trump might have made requests, but how many people were blocked on Twitter in response?

Democrats complain about the Twitter Files being weighted in favor of the political right wing, but maybe that is because most of the requests for censorship came from the DNC and Biden controlled agencies, and most of the people censored were conservatives.  It’s weighted against Democrats because they more commonly use censorship as a weapon.

A stunning 99% of online political contributions made by Twitter employees in 2021 went to Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission data.  Are we really supposed to believe that Twitter has been acting for the benefit of both parties, or just one?  

The M.O. of the political left for the past several years now has been cancel culture attacks to silence their opponents and shut down dissent.  Major social media companies are by far more progressive in their affiliations than conservative, and have been a key tool for leftists in targeting and removing contrary speech.  No one on the left talks about being shut down by conservatives, it is always the reverse.  

The social dynamic in the US has been completely out of balance for many years, with corporations and government agencies widely backing the most extreme segments of the far-left.  This is where they get their power.  They certainly don’t get power from being the majority, woke activists are a tiny portion of the overall population and one that is widely despised.  They have been feared in the past only because corporations and the government back them.  The Twitter Files prove this collusion in detail.  

Even moderate liberals like Musk or Taibbi are being run through the gauntlet of character assassination these days because they dared to oppose certain aspects of the far-left agenda.  But the bottom line is this – Only the political left and some Neo-Cons within the GOP have displayed open disdain for the dissemination of the truth.  We saw this with the Biden Laptop story.  We saw this with covid facts that were inconvenient to the establishment narrative.  And, we saw this recently with Tucker Carlson’s release of suppressed J6 footage.  

The average conservative and liberty minded independent sees sunlight as the best disinfectant, while establishment elitists and woke activists view open discussion and debate of information as a “dangerous” frivolity.  We believe that the truth is arrived at through discourse.  They believe that the truth is what they say it is.

The Twitter Files have torn open the veil obscuring big government and big tech collusion and this makes certain people very nervous and very angry.  Take note of who those people are.  Who is enraged?  Who is hostile to the exposure of government censorship?  Those are the real villains that need to face scrutiny, not the messengers passing the information along.  

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge