CEO of Facebook parent company Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has admitted in a bombshell interview that Facebook censored information relating to Covid-19 at the request of the scientific “establishment” — despite such information ultimately turning out to be “debatable or true”.
In the interview, given to the ‘Lex Fridman Podcast,’ the 39-year-old big tech giant admitted that things which ended up being “more debatable or true” were censored by Meta owned platform Facebook — which he admitted had undermined trust.
Dealing with the issue of misinformation online, he told the podcast:
“So misinformation, I think, has been a really tricky one because there are things that are obviously false, right, or they may be factual but may not be harmful.
“So are you gonna censor someone for just being wrong? If there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing? There’s a bunch of real issues and challenges there,” he added.
He continued to highlight information related to COVID, stating:
“Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where, there were, you know, real health implications, but there hasn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions.
“And, you know, unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that, you know, kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that in retrospect, ended up being, you know, more debatable or true.
“And that stuff is really tough. It really undermines trust and that,” he said.
Mark Zuckerberg says it was challenging to censor COVID misinformation because the scientific establishment was frequently wrong, which ultimately undermined public trust:
"Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier in the pandemic where there were real health… pic.twitter.com/y0ZaX4kmCE
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) June 9, 2023
The admissions come following revelations, made in January of this year, that Zuckergerg’s Facebook censored true content about Covid vaccines. An email, described as remarkable, showed Facebook reassuring the White House that they were censoring “often-true content” that did not contain “actionable misinformation” but was “discouraging vaccines”:
Many think social media companies only censored "vaccine misinformation." But a recently-released email shows Facebook reassuring the White House that they were censoring "often-true content” that "does not contain actionable misinformation" but was "discouraging vaccines." pic.twitter.com/u2McUIviaM
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) January 11, 2023
In an email, a Facebook Executive promised: “We’ll remove these Groups, Pages, and Accounts when they are disproportionately promoting this sensationalized content. More on this front as we proceed to implement.”
During an interview with Joe Rogan last August, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook had also restricted the reach of the Hunter Biden laptop story under “pressure” from the FBI. He said they had warned him about the potential release of “Russian disinformation” which was aimed at inflicting harm on Biden’s presidential campaign.
The New York Post claimed that leaked emails from Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop showed the then vice-president was helping his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Facebook and Twitter restricted sharing of the article, which prompted allegations of censorship.
Zuckerberg said at the time that getting the decision wrong “sucks”.
“When we take down something that we’re not supposed to, that’s the worst,” Zuckerberg said in the rare extended media interview on Rogan’s Spotify podcast.
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