Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden administration was wrong to demand that Facebook censor what it deemed “COVID misinformation” during the pandemic.
Meta’s CEO said in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that they will fight any future attempts at censorship and also admitted that the company had “degraded” stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
He wrote that the White House “repeatedly pressured our teams over months to censor certain content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed significant frustration with our teams when we did not agree.”
He said that pressure “was misguided” and regretted “that we were not more open about it.”
“We made some decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we would not make today,” he added.
Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden administration was wrong to demand that Facebook censor what they considered “COVID misinformation” during the pandemic
“I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in any direction, and we are ready to fight back if something like this happens again.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment. A Meta spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the letter spoke for itself.
Zuckerberg also said Meta would not repeat what it did in 2020, funding nonprofits to finance local election efforts, which Republicans criticized as “Zuckerbucks” aimed at helping liberals.
He and his wife Priscilla Chan donated nearly $420 million to nonprofits that helped with the administration and infrastructure of the 2020 election and heavily favored Democratic counties.
Zuckerberg, 37, and Chan, 36, donated $419.5 million to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), which the report said were given with specific conditions.
Using the grants, both CTCL and CEIR provided funds to local governments to implement administrative practices, voting methods, data sharing agreements, and outreach programs for the 2020 election.
The analysis shows that counties that won under Biden were three times more likely to get funding from the organizations than those under Trump, and Democrats reportedly received a significant boost in key swing states through promoting practices that have typically favored their vote counts, such as mail-in voting.
In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg acknowledges the perception of bias and vows not to do the same next time.
Zuckerberg wrote that the Biden White House “repeatedly pressured our teams over months to censor certain content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not agree.”
Zuckerberg also said Meta would not repeat what it did in 2020, funding nonprofits to finance local election efforts, which Republicans criticized as “Zuckerbucks.”
“Despite the analysis I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know some people believe this work benefited one party more than the other,” he wrote.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role in any way, or even appear to be playing one. That’s why I don’t plan to make a similar contribution in this cycle.”
In April 2020, Facebook announced it would impose limits on “harmful misinformation about COVID-19.”
That included attempts to claim that the so-called “lab leak” theory was true. Within a year, the company reversed the decision.
He also admitted that the company “should not have demoted” Hunter Biden’s laptop story before the 2020 election.
Democrats and liberal media outlets suggested Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” ahead of the election, prompting social media outlets to censor the story.
In June 2024, federal prosecutors used the laptop as evidence in the ongoing federal firearms trial against the first son in Delaware, casting doubt on its authenticity.
“It has since become clear that the report was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have downplayed the story,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Zuckerberg also admitted that the company “should not have demoted” Hunter Biden’s laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
Many Republicans believe that suppressing history led to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ victory
In a statement to X, Jordan called this a “huge victory for free speech.”
In February 2021, the company announced it would expand its crackdown to include claims that the virus was man-made. In a blog post, Facebook said it would not allow conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines.
The social network’s change of position comes on the same day that President Joe Biden asked his intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to identify the origins of the coronavirus.
In 2020, the Trump administration’s claims that the coronavirus might have originated in a Wuhan lab were met with skepticism by mainstream media outlets, which appeared to adopt the view that the pathogen was transmitted from bats to humans.
Democrats and anti-Trump commentators in the press accused the then-president and his administration of promoting a theory that China deliberately created the coronavirus to divert attention from its handling of efforts to mitigate the spread of the disease in the United States.
But reports of an apparent cover-up of the virus’s origins have prompted a re-examination of the issue.
In October 2021, it was revealed that Facebook researchers allegedly had extensive knowledge that coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation existed on the company’s apps, but did little to combat it, much less share the information with the White House.
Documents filed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen show how multiple studies were conducted that produced a series of figures detailing the types of users who were most likely to share fake news.
In a statement to X, Congressman Jim Jordan called the letter a “huge victory for free speech.”
In October 2021, it was revealed that Facebook researchers allegedly had extensive knowledge that coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation existed on the company’s apps, but did little to combat it, much less share the information with the White House.
Lawmakers, academics and the White House have urged Facebook to share such information publicly.
Facebook employees also knew that misinformation about the coronavirus was dominating parts of the social media platform, creating “echo chamber effects” that ultimately reinforced vaccine hesitancy.
The set of documents show that, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully investigated how its platforms were spreading misinformation about potentially life-saving vaccines. They also reveal that rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions to counter anti-vaccine content on the site, to no avail.
Facebook’s internal discussions were revealed in statements made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel for former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen.