Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has admitted that the social media giant suppressed a significant story by the New York Post on the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 presidential election – after being approached by the FBI.
Appearing on the hugely popular “Joe Rogan Experience,” Zuckerberg was asked about why Facebook suppressed the story, which Twitter banned completely – and which was shown, after the election, to be correct.
The clip has already gone viral with 6 million views overnight.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1
— Minds💡 (@minds) August 25, 2022
“Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
Zuckerberg said Facebook’s “third-party fact-checking program” was checking the story – but some of those appointed by the platform to adjudicate on disputes have been accused of bias.
The ranking of the Hunter Biden story was pushed down in Facebook’s ranking for news feeds so that “fewer people saw it than would’ve otherwise”, Zuckerberg admitted.
Asked “by what percentage?” by Rogan Zuckerberg said: “I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s – it’s meaningful.”
“But we weren’t sort of as black and white about it as Twitter. We just kind of thought hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement- they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I want to take that seriously.”
“Did they specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?” Rogan asked.
“No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern,” Zuckerberg replied.
He said that he regretted suppressing a story that turned out to be true. “Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sucks,” he told Rogan.