Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has expressed regret that his company folded to pressure from the Biden administration during the pandemic to censor certain Covid-19 content, and has said that “we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again”.
Zuckerberg revealed the extent to which Meta’s content moderation teams have been forced to address politically unpopular content in a letter sent on Monday to the House Judiciary Committee, in response to its investigation into content moderation on internet platforms.
He said that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured Meta’s teams to “censor certain Covid-19 content, including humour 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 wrote in the letter addressed to Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan.
The government pressure applied to Meta was “wrong,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he regrets that they “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,” he said.
The Meta CEO also addressed changes to his platforms’ moderation practices since the 2020 ‘Hunter Biden Laptop’ story. The FBI warned Meta about “a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma” in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, Zuckerberg said, revealing that the story was “temporarily demoted” on his platforms once it broke while it was sent to fact-checkers for review.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story. We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers,” the letter reads.
Apart from content moderation, Zuckerberg said that he would not be repeating his pandemic-era push to provide funds through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support US electoral infrastructure after the donations were criticised by Republicans as being partisan.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle,” Zuckerberg said.
The House Judiciary GOP X account posted Zuckerberg’s letter, describing it as a “big win for free speech”.
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
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. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K