Facebook used its algorithm to suppress Hunter Biden's laptop article for several days in 2020, said Mark Zuckerberg, admitting that it was a mistake. The Facebook CEO made the controversial revelation on Joe Rogan's show on Thursday.
Zuckerberg addressed how Facebook handles controversial news issues and matters of media censorship. He confirmed that Facebook didn't completely block the Hunter Biden laptop story, like micro-blogging site Twitter, but it followed strategies to push it down to users' newsfeeds for as long as a week.
Facebook Waited For Complete Information On Hunter Biden's Laptop Issue
They actually waited for a complete information to come down on the matter to be assured whether the story was accurate or not.
He also revealed that Meta was warned by the FBI to be aware of Russian propaganda due to the presidential polls in 2020.
Intel Officials Suggested It Was Russian Information Operation
That was around the same time the sordid contents of Hunter Biden's computer were first reported by the New York Post - and censored by Twitter. At the time, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed a letter claiming the laptop story 'had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,' according to Daily Mail.
It appeared that Zuckerberg was trying to underline that Twitter banned the sharing of the Hunter Biden story and suspension of New York Post's Twitter account on the matter.
Justifying Facebook's actions, Zuckerberg stated that his company took a different path than Twitter.
"Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, 'Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically, there's about to be some kind of dump of — that's similar to that. So just be vigilant," he said on the Joe Rogan show.
According to Zuckerberg, if something is alleged to be false information, a third-party fact-checking team evaluates the claim. He claimed that, unlike Twitter, Facebook's protocol is distinct.
Underlining that Twitter acted by stating that you are not permitted to share this at all, Zuckerberg stressed that's not what Facebook did. Facebook also employs this third-party fact-checking program because the company doesn't want to be the ones to decide what is real and untrue when something is reported to us as potentially, disinformation, or crucial misinformation, according to Zuckerberg.
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