Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for allowing the White House to pressure Meta into censoring COVID-19 dissent from social platforms in 2021, saying “the government pressure was wrong” and openly wishing the tech company had been “more outspoken about it.”
In a letter addressed to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, the Meta CEO reflected on the 2021 pressure campaign, saying President Joe Biden’s administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
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
While Zuckerberg took responsibility for the final decision to remove content, he noted that the choice was made “in the wake of this pressure.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” the Meta CEO added. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote.
At the time of the pressure to remove content amid the pandemic, Facebook said it was taking “aggressive steps” to counter the misinformation flooding their platform.
The Meta CEO also expressed regret for temporarily demoting a New York Post story in the lead-up to the 2020 election about the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents. Zuckerberg explained that the story was sent to fact-checkers for a review and demoted as the company awaited a response.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg said. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again — for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.”
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