Sen. Bonham: Facebook censorship shows cracks in our democracy

By Oregon State Senate GOP Leader Daniel Bonham,

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped a bombshell sharing what many of us already suspected — the government worked with them to suppress information and open debate on their platform during COVID-19.

What was surprising is the revelation from an open letter to the Congressional Judiciary Committee stating the Biden-Harris administration, “including the White House, repeatedly pressured [Facebook] teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with [the] teams when [they] didn’t agree.”

Wow. Our nation was literally gaslighted. During a time of darkness, confusion and the need for connection and even humor – our current administration opted to censor information they didn’t agree with to ensure control.

Further, the letter admits that Facebook was pressured to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. This direct election interference is deeply troubling and calls into question what other political influence the Democratic party pushes onto other media-related industries – news departments, radio, newspapers and more.

This sets a dangerous precedent for residents, businesses, the media and the country. While I would guess the story will quietly fall away into oblivion in the next couple of weeks, we cannot let it.

The next time someone brings up the term dictatorship when it comes to an administration – I would like everyone to keep this incident in mind.