Senator: Facebook suppressed COVID news at government's direction
Warns people who were censored may 'have a cause of action'
By Bob UnruhPublished June 7, 2021 at 11:28am
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says people who posted on Facebook comments about the COVID-19 catastrophe coming out of a Chinese lab – and were censored for that – now may have a legal case to be considered.
"If you went out and posted the facts that led a year ago to the very strong likelihood that the COVID virus escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, China, if you posted that a year ago and they took it down, I think there's a very good argument you have a cause of action against Facebook," Cruz said on Sunday.
"Facebook would ordinarily say, 'We're a private company, we're not liable.
Well, you know what, when they act at the behest of the government, when they contact [Anthony] Fauci, when they say, 'Should we censor this?' and Fauci says, 'Yes' and they censor it for the federal government and then magically when the government changes its mind, and say, 'Oh, all those facts that were there a year ago, now you're allowed to talk about it,' they stopped censoring it with a flip of a switch, that lays a very strong argument that Facebook is operating as a state agency and that opens very significant legal liability," he said.
His comments came in an interview with Fox interview Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures."
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He said it is "clear" that Facebook was using its "monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government" regarding COVID-19."
Facebook abruptly did an about-face on May 26, suddenly announcing it no longer would ban posts suggesting COVID-19 is man-made or came from the Wuhan, China, lab.
It happened as President Biden called for an investigation into exactly that.
Previously, Facebook can censored those comments, "following consultations."
"These latest breakthroughs have real consequence because it now is clear that Facebook was operating at the direction of and in the direct benefit of the federal government and operating as the government's censor, utilizing their monopoly position to censor on behalf of the government," Cruz said.
The social media company recently said, "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps."
The report explained, "Public calls for further investigation into the pandemic’s origins intensified in recent days after the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology displayed symptoms severe enough to seek hospital treatment.
A previous State Department fact sheet noted the researchers had 'symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.'"
Social media companies, in fact, have been told several times by Democrat politicians in Washington to censor more information about COVID than they previously had been suppressing.
A commentary at RedState said, "Cruz is exactly correct that Facebook and other social media companies were operating on behalf of the government, though, it wasn’t at the behest of the Trump administration while it was in power.
Rather, it appears to have been done in coordination with far-left bureaucrats."
It continued, "In fact, the reveal of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails proved that he was in direct contact with Mark Zuckerberg, who reached out to coordinate with Fauci on messaging.
Given we don’t have a transcript of Fauci’s proceeding phone calls, we can’t know for sure what was discussed over the last year-plus between the two, but what we do know is what decisions followed.
"RedState said, "Facebook had been absolutely ruthless against anyone who would dare to suggest COVID-19 came from anything else but nature.
That was the oligarchy-blessed explanation, and nothing else was up for discussion.
Only after the Biden administration was finally forced to admit that an investigation into the origins was needed, and that the lab leak theory was plausible, did Facebook do an about-face.
That’s only further evidence that they are working on behalf of government interests, just as Cruz suggests."
https://www.wnd.com/2021/06/senator-facebook-operating-federal-governments-direction/
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