Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Talks About Government Pressure to Censor COVID-19 Posts

Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has written a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured Meta’s teams to censor posts related to COVID-19. He mentioned that some changes were made under this pressure, which, with hindsight, would not be made today. Zuckerberg expressed regret for not being more outspoken about the issue.

In his letter, Zuckerberg stated, “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.”

He added, “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. 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.”

The House Committee on the Judiciary, of the Republican Party, shared 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.”

Zuckerberg also recalled an incident where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation involving the Biden family and Burisma before the 2020 election. As a result, Meta demoted a story on corruption allegations involving Joe Biden’s family. However, Zuckerberg claims that the reporting was not Russian disinformation and that the story should not have been demoted.

“That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he stated.