During the pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg claims that the Biden administration put pressure on Facebook to censor COVID-19 content, and he expresses regret for doing so.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has claimed that the Biden administration “pressured” Facebook to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic. He laments complying with these demands.
On August 26, the tech magnate wrote a letter to Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, concerning the ongoing investigation into content moderation on social media platforms.
In 2021, he asserted that the company was “repeatedly pressured” by senior officials from the Biden Administration to censor specific COVID-19 information, including humor and satire..
He stated that the Meta team’s decision to censor content was ultimately theirs; however, they made some decisions that they would not have made today if they had the benefit of “hindsight and new information.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”
He said, “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.”
The Meta CEO also expressed regret in the same letter for demoting a story in 2020 that involved Russian disinformation and Hunter Biden’s laptop while awaiting fact-checkers.
He stated that the platform was under scrutiny at the time due to the censorship, and policies have since been modified to prevent such an occurrence.
The White House was contacted by Cointelegraph for a response.
In the interim, the letter elicited a significant response from proponents of free expression and decentralization on X.
Gabor Gubacs, the Director of Digital Asset Strategy at VanEck, shared the letter in a post on X, expressing his satisfaction that Zuckerberg made it public. He further stated, “I am pleased that Zuckerberg made this information public.”
“Every official who illegally pressured media companies to censor their users should be named, investigated, and tried in court.”
“The populace had reached their limit.” Speech is not regulated by the government. He further stated, “The earth is not a prison, and they are not our wardens.”
In the meantime, US Senator for Utah Mike Lee posed the question, “Who else wishes that Mark Zuckerberg’s regret had manifested itself prior to the damage being inflicted, rather than years later?”
Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, advised his 3.3 million X followers that “we should support our American industry leaders in their efforts to resolve this matter.” He then proceeded to elaborate:
“It’s appropriate not to trust and be skeptical given what’s happened, but I would be overjoyed to watch Zuckerberg emerge as a free speech champion.”
Elon Musk, a fellow tech magnate, emphasized that his social media platform, X, is “genuinely intended to accommodate all perspectives within the confines of national laws.”
He further stated that Zuckerberg’s admission of regret was “a positive development.”
Critics characterized Wikipedia’s purported efforts to combat disinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic as censorship, as reported by Cointelegraph in April.
