Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” Meta’s teams to censor posts related to COVID-19.
Zuckerberg expressed regret over not being “more outspoken” about the situation, stating that changes were made to the platform’s content moderation that, in hindsight, would not be implemented today. He said, “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. 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 emphasized his belief that government pressure was wrong and reiterated his commitment to not compromising content standards due to pressure from any administration. “We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he added.
The House Committee on the Judiciary, affiliated with the Republican Party, highlighted Zuckerberg’s letter on social media platform X, stating, “Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story. Big win for free speech.”
In the letter, Zuckerberg also recalled an incident where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation related to the Biden family and Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 election. As a result, Meta temporarily demoted a story on corruption allegations involving Joe Biden’s family. Zuckerberg admitted that the story was not Russian disinformation and that the decision to demote it was a mistake.