Biden govt pressured Meta to censor COVID content: Zuckerberg tells House Committee
The Meta CEO wrote in his letter that he believes the govt pressure was wrong, and he regrets that his company was not more outspoken about it
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has alleged in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that the Joe Biden administration on more than one occasion put pressure on his company to censor posts related to COVID-19.
The House Judiciary Committee of the Republican Party shared his letter on the social media platform X.
The Republican Party’s post on X read, “Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
- Biden-Harris Admin “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.
- Facebook censored Americans.
- Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech.”
It is interesting to note that Zuckerberg actually referred to the “Biden administration”, but the Republican Party mentions the “Biden-Harris Admin”.
Zuckerberg wrote in his letter, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content, including humour and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including Covid-19 related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”
The Meta CEO admits in the letter that they would not have made the changes if they had had the benefit of hindsight and new information that is available today, and that he regrets not being more “outspoken” about it.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were more not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction, and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” continued Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg also mentions in his letter that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
He says that Meta “demoted” a story on corruption allegations involving Joe Biden’s family, but that the story was not Russian disinformation and the story should not have been demoted.