Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Meta. Meta owns Facebook. He sent a letter on Monday to Rep. Jim Jordan, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. In the letter, he acknowledged that Meta censored Americans under the direction of the Biden and Harris administrations and that Meta suppressed the Hunter Biden Laptop story before the 2020 elections.
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
The news is not likely to surprise most people who read this article. However, Zuck’s forthright admission and apparent expression of regret are fascinating.
There are only two pages in the tweet, but we’ve highlighted a few key passages.
Senior officials in the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressed our teams to censor COVID-19-related content, such as humor and satire. They expressed frustration when our teams refused. We made the final decision to remove content, and we are responsible for our decisions. This includes any COVID-19 changes that we implemented in response to this pressure. I think the government’s pressure was wrong and regret not being more vocal about it. In retrospect, I think that we made some decisions we would not make now. As I told our teams, we shouldn’t compromise our standards of content due to pressures from the Administration. We are prepared to fight back if this ever happens again.
The FBI also warned us of a possible Russian disinformation campaign about the Bidens and Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. We sent a New York Post article reporting on corruption accusations involving the family of then-Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden to fact-checkers and temporarily demoted that story while we waited for a response. In retrospect, it’s clear that this reporting was not Russian misinformation. We shouldn’t have demoted the article. We have changed our processes and policies to ensure this never happens again. For example, we don’t temporarily degrade things in the US as we wait for fat checkers.
Zuckerberg addressed the use of “Zuckerbucks” in 2020, which he considered resources to help with election infrastructure.
Even though I have seen analyses to the contrary, I am aware that many people still believe the work has benefited one side over another. I want to remain neutral and avoid playing any role or appearing to play one. This cycle, I do not plan to make a similar contribution.
Facebook’s censorship of COVID and the Hunter Biden laptop issue is not news. These frank statements by Zuckerberg before the Judiciary Committee, however, add a whole new dimension to the issue of government censorship and social media platforms. One cannot help but wonder what motivates this new approach.
