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Mark Zuckerberg says government ‘pressured’ Meta to ‘censor’ COVID content: What you should know

(The Hill) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee regretting that he had not been clearer about “government pressure” on the Biden administration to “censor” content on its platforms.

“As I told our teams then, I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any government from any direction,” he wrote in the letter.


Here’s what you need to know about the claims.

Zuckerberg claims in letter to the Judiciary Committee that the government exerted pressure

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg answers a question during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on January 31, 2024.

In the letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Zuckerberg acknowledged that there is “a lot of talk” going on right now about how the U.S. government interacts with media companies like Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook.

The letter, sent on Monday, is the latest in the committee’s investigation into technology companies’ collaboration with the federal government and content moderation decisions.

Zuckerberg said Meta has produced “thousands of documents” for the committee’s investigation and will make employees available for interviews. To further assist the investigation, the tech mogul wrote the letter to “share what I have taken away from this process.”

The letter was shared on the House Judiciary Committee’s Facebook page, which called it a “major victory for free speech.”

“Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. The Biden-Harris administration ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story,” the panel wrote.

Biden administration reportedly calls for censorship of COVID-19 satire

President Joe Biden speaks about COVID-19 vaccinations Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Zuckerberg claimed that senior Biden administration officials pressured Meta to censor certain content related to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

“For months in 2021, senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed deep frustration with our teams when we did not agree,” he wrote.

Zuckerberg said he believes the government pressure was “misguided” and that the company did not “be more open” about the issue at the time. He added that Meta made decisions that they would not make today “in hindsight and with new information.”

Later in the letter, he added: “We are ready to fight back if something like this happens again.”

Meta downgraded article about Biden family due to Russian disinformation fears

FILE - Meta's logo is seen on a sign at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Nov. 9, 2022. Facebook and Instagram fail to protect underage users from exposure to child sexual abuse material and allow adults to solicit pornographic images from them, New Mexico's attorney general alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023, that follows an undercover online investigation of Meta's social media platforms. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

Meta’s logo is seen on a sign at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Nov. 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

Zuckerberg said the FBI warned Meta about a “possible Russian disinformation operation” ahead of the 2020 presidential election between (President Joe) Biden and former President (Donald) Trump.

In the letter, he pointed out that the possible operation involved the Biden family and its ties to Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company linked to the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

The company made the decision to downgrade a New York Post article about corruption allegations against Biden, the then Democratic presidential candidate.

“We sent the story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily downgraded it while we waited for a response,” Zuckerberg said. “It has since become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight we should not have downgraded the story.”

Meta has updated its policies and procedures, including refraining from temporarily downgrading positions in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers, he added.

CEO recognizes services to “last presidential election campaign”

FILE - This photo shows the logos of the Facebook and Instagram mobile apps, from left, in New York, Oct. 5, 2021.

This photo shows the logos of the mobile apps of Facebook and Instagram (from left) in New York, October 5, 2021. (Stock)

In the final paragraph of his two-page letter, Zuckerberg said he wanted to address the “contributions I made during the last presidential election in support of election infrastructure.”

Although the contributions were intended to be “non-partisan,” according to the Meta founder, they were accused of unfair distribution between left- and right-leaning areas, which Republicans called “sugar bucks.”

Zuckerberg said the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative would expand to urban, rural and suburban communities.

He said that although he had read analyses that showed the opposite, “I know that some people believe that this work has benefited one party more than the other.”

“My goal is to be neutral and not to play a role in either direction – or even to appear to play a role,” he concluded. “That’s why I don’t plan to make a similar contribution this cycle.”

Trump responds that the 2020 elections were rigged

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at the 146th General Conference of the National Guard Association of the United States in Detroit, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

In a post on his Truth Social platform, former President Trump responded to Zuckerberg’s letter and repeated one of his biggest false claims, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in Biden’s favor.

“This is what everyone has been waiting for – THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED!” he posted.

The former president was responding to a post by his lawyer Alina Habba attacking the Biden administration and Trump’s new Democratic rival in the election, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This is exactly what this government (including Kamala) has done to our country,” Habba wrote. “Censorship only exists in communist countries, not in this republic.”

The White House defended its actions in a statement to The Hill.

“In the face of a deadly pandemic, this administration has called for responsible action to protect public health and safety,” a spokesperson wrote in the statement. “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe technology companies and other private actors should consider the impact of their actions on the American people while making independent decisions about the information they present.”

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