White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki started a hullabaloo yesterday by admitting that they had been in “frequent contact” with Facebook to “flag misinformation” to get Facebook to take down information about the Wuhan coronavirus that they considered “misinformation” and to ban users. Today, she doubled down on that and said that people banned on one platform should be banned on all platforms, an especially troubling thing to say when the government is in constant contact with social media to flag and ban people.

Then Joe Biden made an insane comment on his way to his helicopter at the the White House that Facebook was “killing people.” “What’s your message to platforms like Facebook?” “They’re killing people,” Biden said. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people.”

Facebook is now fighting back after that accusation.

#Break: FACEBOOK responds to Biden’s “They’re killing people” remark >> pic.twitter.com/CIB8tPTwdr

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 16, 2021

“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,” Facebook said in a statement they released. “The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”

That’s the wrong response. It isn’t about whether the information they are providing is good, bad or indifferent. It isn’t about whether they save lives or not. The bottom line is the state doesn’t have a right to censor information that Americans hear but that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

The government doesn’t get to determine what truth is. Of course by their own standards now Misinformation Joe, who claimed that Facebook was killing people, needs to be banned, since that’s misinformation.

Facebook also put the finger on the White House, saying they were trying to blame Facebook for the White House missing its own vaccination goals.

NEW: FACEBOOK officiall adds this statement (next tweet) accusing White House of using Facebook as a scapegoat for missing its vaccine goals.

Official requested anonymity, but I think it’s worth putting here as it may be indicative of how Facebook leadership sees this issue >

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 16, 2021

FACEBOOK official: “In private exchanges the Surgeon General has praised our work, including our efforts to inform people about COVID-19. They knew what they were doing. The White House is looking for scapegoats for missing their vaccine goals.”

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 16, 2021

It is true that the White House missed their July 4th goal numbers. But it also isn’t Facebook or the government’s role to get people vaccinated – that’s up to the people themselves, that’s their choice and everyone has had an ample change to get vaccinated if they wanted. The government needs to stop trying to compel people.

Facebook should be learning a big lesson in this. Not that they’ll pay attention to it. That even though they’ve gone along and shut down posts in the past – for example posts alleging a possible lab leak for the virus – the Democrats would eat them up and spit them out if they don’t fully comply with what the Democrats want. But this wouldn’t stop them from continuing to work hand and glove with the government.