Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Monday that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor Covid-19 content. In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg said they will resist any future attempts at censorship. He also admitted that the company "demoted" stories related to Hunter Biden's laptop.
According to Zuckerberg, the Biden administration requested that Meta remove content that included "humor and satire." He expressed regret for complying with some of those demands. He wrote that 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."
Zuckerberg Admits Censoring Covid-19 Content for Joe Biden
"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."
Zuckerberg, 40, promised that if the government makes similar requests in the future, things will be handled differently.
"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.
Zuckerberg assured Jordan that Meta has implemented policies to prevent similar censorship of stories from occurring in the future.
A White House spokesperson told DailyMail.com in a statement that the Biden administration's policy is to encourage big tech companies to act responsibly.
"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."
Zuckerberg Promises Not to Repeat Mistake
A Meta spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the letter speaks for itself. Zuckerberg also said that Meta would not repeat its actions from 2020, when it funded non-profits to support local election efforts—actions Republicans criticized as "Zuckerbucks," claiming they were intended to benefit liberals.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated nearly $420 million to nonprofits that supported the administration and infrastructure of the 2020 election, with a strong focus on Democrat-leaning counties.
Zuckerberg, then 37, and Chan, then 36, contributed $419.5 million to The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), with the report indicating that these funds were provided with specific conditions.
"They were designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities," he said of his motives. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other."
"My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle."
"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 US while waiting for fact-checkers," the billionaire tech entrepreneur claimed.
