Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a lengthy apology last week in which he admitted to making decisions on content moderation as a result of pressure from the Biden Administration.
“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 humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” wrote Zuckerberg in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
As head of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jordan has been investigating Facebook for over a year and a half to determine whether the site colluded with the Biden Administration to censor free speech online.
“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,” continued Zuckerberg. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it…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.”
Speaking with radio host Dana Loesch, Rep. Jordan noted another instance in which the Biden Administration asked a social media network to remove COVID-19-related information. On January 23rd, 2021, Twitter received a letter from the Executive Office of the President asking the platform to remove a tweet about baseball star Hank Aaron passing away shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. The tweet was true, but the Administration wanted it removed in order to avoid exacerbating vaccine hesitancy.
Zuckerberg’s letter also mentioned the infamous ‘Hunter Biden laptop story,’ which was demoted or removed from several social media platforms after the FBI warned it could be a product of Russian disinformation. The story, originally published by the New York Post, turned out to be true. Moving forward, Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook will no longer be demoting or removing content while waiting on a response from fact-checkers.
Lastly, Zuckerberg lamented the public’s perception of his financial contributions during the last presidential election and vowed not to make any contributions this year. ‘My contributions were designed to be non-partisan, however, I know that some people believe this work benefitted one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another, so I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.’
The Biden Administration’s response to Zuckerberg’s letter was weak and vague: “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”
Author’s Note: While I’m sure Zuckerberg’s letter was in part motivated by self-preservation, it also serves as concrete proof that the Biden Administration pressured Facebook and other social media companies to engage in anti-free speech actions. As I wrote a few days ago, the CEO of messaging service Telegram was arrested after refusing to submit to pressure from numerous governments to censor content.
Sources:
NEW: Rep. Jim Jordan Tells Us How Zuckerberg ADMITTED To Him About Censoring Conservatives
Don’t fall for Mark Zuckerberg’s Trump-friendly suck-up
Mark Zuckerberg’s letter about Facebook is not what it seems
