OAN Staff James Meyers
11:36 AM – Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter on Monday that the Biden administration heavily pressured Facebook to censor any online content related to COVID-19 or mRNA vaccines for the virus.
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Zuckerberg made the omission in a shocking letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.), stating that: “senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured” Meta to “censor” content related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This comes after over a year of Zuckerberg providing the committee with hundreds of thousands of documents as part of its investigation into online platforms censoring certain political topics.
The COVID-19 content and request highlighted by the Biden administration involved any posts related to “humor and satire,” according to Zuckerberg. Nevertheless, the CEO emphasized that he allegedly regrets complying with these demands.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
When Facebook did not agree with the censorship, Zuckerberg said that the Biden administration expressed frustration.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were 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,” he added. “Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens.”
A White House spokesperson told Fox News, “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. 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.”
However, the Facebook founder vowed that the company would not make the same mistakes in the future should the government make similar requests.
“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,” he wrote.
The committee first subpoenaed Meta for documents and information on February 15th, 2023, related to content censorship and Meta’s engagements with the executive branch to censor speech.
During that time, the committee was investigating whether the executive branch pressured or worked with private companies to stifle or delete certain kinds of speech at the request of the government, which could be considered a potential violation of the First Amendment.
Additionally, Zuckerberg also admitted to censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was first reported by the New York Post, in addition to being reported by One America News soon after. Mainstream media and big tech companies worked together with the government to suppress any information regarding that story, with false claims related to “Russian disinformation” making it to the forefront of media headlines.
The FBI also warned Meta about “a potential Russian disinformation operation” regarding the Biden family and the Ukraine-based energy company Burisma, leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
The Facebook founder said that the story involving Biden’s family was temporarily “demoted,” as they had fact-checkers who claimed that they reviewed the story and determined it to be false.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg wrote. “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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