In a letter to Congress, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg says he’s done succumbing to pressure from the White House to censor and demote content labeled ‘disinformation’ by the Biden administration.
The founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta Platforms specifically referred to instances where the social media giant had censored “certain content” on COVID-19 during the height of the pandemic and pulled reports about corruption allegations against the Biden family during the 2020 presidential election.
The letter, addressed to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), was posted on the Committee’s Facebook page on Tuesday.
“Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things… Big win for free speech,” the Facebook post said, listing in order that:
- Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.
- Facebook censored Americans.
- Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Although Zuckerberg did not reveal the exact posts removed from Meta’s social media platforms at the time, the letter stated the CEO regretted the choices made at the time and that with “hindsight and new information,” Meta would not have made those same decisions again today.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” the tech mogul wrote in the Aug 26th missive.
“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,” Zuckerberg said.
To note, Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
White House was relentless
According to the letter, Meta staff was “repeatedly pressured… for months” by President Joe Biden’s senior staff and White House officials to remove the singled-out COVID-19 content – even humorous and satirical posts.
The US government's push to censor Meta’s content was said to have occurred in 2021 – a pandemic year when public opinion about federal mandates, including forced vaccinations and mask-wearing, spread like wildfire among users across social media.
In July 2021, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said social media platforms like Facebook "are killing people" for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on its platform, according to Reuters.
The news outlet further reports that the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy both implied publicly that Meta was making it harder to save lives by not abiding by their requests to pull content.
On the Biden family’s personal woes, Zuckerberg said the FBI had misled Meta into demoting breaking news about the President, his mess of a son, Hunter Biden, and a bribery scheme involving Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The FBI instead warned Meta the ‘October surprise’ was simply part of a Russian misinformation campaign targeting the 2020 Biden/Trump presidential election.
Zuckerberg did not specifically mention the now infamous Hunter Biden laptop, which was the alleged “smoking gun” proof of then Vice President Biden’s ‘pay for play’ scheme discovered in a series of email exchanges on the device between the younger Biden and Burisma execs.
“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, adding that Meta policy now dictates that US content will “no longer be temporarily demoted” during a ‘’fact-checking” stage.
Zuckerberg taps out of donations
Finally, Zuckerberg clarified in his letter that the $400 million political contributions made during the last presidential cycle were “to support electoral infrastructure” during the pandemic, and not partisan politics, as many perceived at the time.
To avoid any controversy Zuckerberg said he would be not be making any “similar contributions” for the current 2024 election cycle.
The House Judiciary GOP lauded the move on social media declaring, " That's right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity."
Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won't spend money this election cycle.
undefined House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
That's right, no more Zuck-bucks.
Huge win for election integrity.
The White House released a statement on Zuckerberg's letter saying it had encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety during a deadly pandemic.
"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," the White House said.
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