It took $44 billion of Elon Musk’s money to uncover how national-security agencies like the FBI and Homeland Security — as well as Adam Schiff — conducted censorship on Twitter. Those revelations are still continuing, even while not much else seems to be changing on that platform.

But what about Facebook? Who’s got $100 billion or so to buy out Mark Zuckerberg and get a peek under Meta’s hood? Reason Magazine certainly doesn’t, but it turns out that all Robby Soave needed was a lawsuit and a court order or two. Internal documents show that Facebook essentially allowed the CDC to dictate terms of discussion and debate on its platform relating to COVID-19 as part of its “fact-checking” process:

The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta’s moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.

For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate. …

Facebook’s moderator notes that some of the above claims “would already be violating”—an implicit admission that the CDC’s opinion on the other claims would be a deciding factor in whether the platform would restrict such content. Facebook was clearly a willing participant in this process; moderators repeatedly thanked the CDC for its “help in debunking.”

Claims vetted by the CDC included whether “COVID-19 is man-made.” The CDC told Facebook that it was “theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely.”

Now, why would the CDC care about that last debate? The CDC’s writ is for disease control, ie, measures to take to prevent the spread and acute consequences of disease. The question of disease origin would be more of a concern for other federal agencies — Anthony Fauci’s NIAID, perhaps, but in this case of an already-spreading COVID-19 pandemic, that would be the purview of the State Department and intelligence services.

The CDC didn’t quash discussions just about whether COVID-19 was deliberately engineered as a weapon. They also pressed Meta to shut down any discussion of the lab-leak theory, regardless of the fact that they had no evidence arguing against it. These questions about the virus origin had no impact on the CDC’s mission — and yet the CDC inserted itself into it anyway. Why?

And heaven forfend that Facebook users criticized Anthony “The Science®” Fauci:

Meta also kept the CDC apprised of criticism of Anthony Fauci, the White House’s COVID-19 advisor and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was “very helpful.”

True; it was probably more helpful than Fauci’s mask declarations. Later, the CDC expanded its efforts to censor Facebook posts and discussions that they thought would “cause harm,” rather than just be factually incorrect, including any rebuttals to the claims of total safety in COVID vaccines for children — which had been granted emergency use without the usual longer-term studies to determine safety. (And which are largely unnecessary, given that seriously acute COVID-19 cases are almost unknown in otherwise healthy children.)

After the revelations in the Twitter Files, most of us assumed the worst about Facebook and censorship. Thanks to now-Senator and then-AG Eric Schmitt of Missouri, we now have the evidence that the government’s co-opting of social media platforms to conduct censorship campaigns was not limited to policing tweets. Now we need the Google Files to determine whether the federal government conducted a similar campaign against YouTube users as well, although at this point we can certainly assume it.

But we shouldn’t have to assume it. The new Republican majority in the House has the authority to subpoena Google and Meta over any executive-branch activities used to censor free speech and quash debate. They need to use it ASAP to get to the bottom of this unconstitutional and frightening abuse of power and make sure it doesn’t happen again.