President Joe Biden's campaign is aiming to fight alleged "misinformation" on social media during the 2024 presidential race, all while Republicans raise heightened censorship concerns over how Democrats have coordinated with platforms on content moderation.
The initiative, partly spearheaded by Biden's deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, has involved recruiting hundreds of volunteers and staffers, as well as purchasing advertisements, Politico reported. Its revelation comes days after the Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to halt an order from an appeals court restricting the White House from unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to remove content.
"The campaign is going to have to be more aggressive pushing back on misinformation from a communications perspective and filling some of the gaps these companies are leaving behind," said Flaherty, who the Washington Examiner reported initiated contact with platforms like Facebook to flag "disinformation" posts as a White House staffer.
Flaherty, for instance, emailed a Facebook employee in May 2021 a widely-shared post by an account named Dee Roy showing a man in a mask with a sign slamming masks and vaccines, and claimed it showed how the platform wasn't adequately moderating COVID-19 content, documents show. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and conservative groups, including America First Legal, later launched public records investigations to uncover Flaherty-tied communications on fighting purported "disinformation," some of which were unearthed through a Louisiana lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general.
