The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a whistleblower protection organization, has announced a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request aimed at shedding light on Big Tech's involvement in censoring posts and content about the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The incident, which occurred in early February 2023, received global attention due to the "hazardous" materials loaded onto as many as 38 of the train's freight cars. Some of these materials burned for several days before being extinguished, sending massive plumes of who-knows-what into the skies.
The entire fiasco became a scandal after it became clear that a coverup was taking place. That coverup involved social media platforms like Facebook (Meta) that, according to GAP, silenced user posts that questioned the official story about what happened.
"Facebook (Meta) was, according to the Government Accountability Project, fairly quick to try to suppress – by means of deleting or flagging – posts that raised the issue of possible health risks related to the derailment," reported Reclaim the Net about the matter.
(Related: The areas in and around East Palestine are now ripe for "cancer clusters" due to all the chemical dioxins and other poisons released by the derailed train.)
EPA suspected as being behind Facebook's East Palestine censorship
The FOIA filing wants to know which government entities are behind Facebook's censorship of East Palestine content, suspecting that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was actively communicating with Facebook about how to control and steer the narrative.
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Pages like "East Palestine Off the Rails" that allowed users to discuss details about the train derailment were removed, while specific users who were identified as being ringleaders in the conversation were censored.
A scientist by the name of Scott Smith, for example, posted about elevated dioxin levels in East Palestine following the disaster. His official "public figure" account on Facebook was flagged as a result.
Another person named Jamie Rae Wallace who had previously tagged Smith with the link to a mainstream media article about the topic "received a text from Mark Durno, EPA Region 5 leader on the ground and Homeland Security Advisor, telling her to remove her Facebook post where she posted to think critically about answers the EPA was giving residents regarding their health."
Facebook's determination based on all of this was to censor Smith's post by tagging it with a notice that said:
"This post may go against our guidelines on suggested content."
Another bizarre tag that Facebook was using to censor people's posts read:
"This post may show content that is broadly disliked."
Smith, who is part of the FOIA request, commented on all this with the following statement:
"Anyone who cares about their constitutional rights and free speech needs to pay attention to what is happening in East Palestine, Ohio. That is why we need EPA records to shine light on any coordination with Facebook to suppress the free sharing of information on what is currently happening to residents there. The government should not be serving as a mechanism of censorship to protect multi-billion-dollar corporations."
You can read the entirety of the FOIA request at this link.
GAP's environmental investigator, Lesley Pacey, further commented on the matter by stating that Facebook should never censor independent science, especially when it comes from people who are "understandably concerned about pollution in their backyards."
"The public has a right to discuss and debate the government's response to this environmental disaster as well as post news articles that legitimately address potential health risks," she added.
The latest news about social media's antagonism towards the First Amendment can be found at Censorship.news.
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