WASHINGTON – Empower Oversight is sounding the alarm about Big Tech’s suppression of its campaign to fund a documentary regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story, appearing to be just another round of restricted coverage of the story.
The documentary, Shielded by Power: The Whistleblowers vs. The Big Guy, tells the story of IRS Special Agents turned whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who blew the whistle to Congress on the Hunter Biden investigation, disclosing that Hunter Biden’s laptop had been accessed via a signed search warrant, had been in FBI possession since fall 2019, and had been authenticated months before the New York Post published its reporting. That reporting was suppressed by Facebook and Twitter in October 2020 — a decision Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg later acknowledged to Congress was a mistake.
In a letter to members of Congress, Empower Oversight explained that after launching a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo — which itself delayed the project’s launch by several weeks by seeking changes to the campaign’s content — the organization launched digital advertising on Meta, Google, and X directing viewers to shieldedbypower.com.
None of the ads have run at this time, despite representatives of Empower Oversight meeting every condition required. Meta permanently suspended the Facebook ad account of Empower Oversight’s ads manager, wiping user data from unrelated prior ads. Google suspended the organization’s ads account as well.
In fact, during one lengthy conversation, a Meta customer service representative stated the platform does not “support the scope of this content,” which is reminiscent of the platform’s prior attempts at viewpoint discrimination.
In the letter, Empower Oversight president Tristan Leavitt wrote that Meta’s conduct “constitutes suppression of the story of Facebook’s very own past actions on this exact same topic. We knew Hollywood would not want to see our documentary made. But to be censored by one of the same social media companies that suppressed this story previously raises significant questions about the truthfulness of their responses to past congressional oversight.”
The documentary is being produced in partnership with Fruition Productions. To support the production, visit shieldedbypower.com.
For a copy of the letter, click here.
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