Sports

Mark Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor Covid-19 content in 2021


Support truly
independent journalism

Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.

Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.

Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.

Louise Thomas

Mark Zuckerberg has now said that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor Covid-19 content back in 2021.

The CEO of Meta – Facebook and Instagram’s parent company – wrote a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday where he acknowledged that senior officials in Joe Biden’s administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humorous and satire.”

In the letter, titled to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg admitted that he regretted not pushing back more on the administration.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he said.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Covid-19 misinformation was rife on social media platforms during the pandemic, despite tech companies’ efforts to curtail it.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court backed the Biden administration when it ruled the government can ask social media companies to remove harmful misinformation from their platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter that senior officials from the Biden administration ‘repeatedly pressured’ Facebook to remove Covid-19 content in 2021
Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter that senior officials from the Biden administration ‘repeatedly pressured’ Facebook to remove Covid-19 content in 2021 (JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images)

In a 6-3 decision, justices threw out a lower court ruling that limited the government’s ability to communicate with social media companies, saying that decision was incorrect because the challengers – two states and five social media users – failed to show they were the proper groups to bring the lawsuit.

Zuckerberg did not go into specific detail about the content Facebook felt pressured to remove, but warned: “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.”

The billionaire tech entrepreneur also admitted Facebook was wrong to suppress a The New York Post story about Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

In October 2020, the newspaper reported it had accessed the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that he had left at a Delaware repair shop. This included a so-called “smoking gun” email where the now-president’s embattled son had offered to arrange for his father to meet an executive at Burisma – the Ukrainian energy company which Hunter sat on the board of.

News organizations, including others owned by News International boss Rupert Murdoch, initially passed on the story because the authenticity of the emails could not be verified.

In Monday’s letter, Zuckerberg said the platform “shouldn’t have demoted” the New York Post story detailing the corruption allegations while waiting for fact checkers to review it ahead of the 2020 election.

He revealed that Facebook has since changed its policies in the wake of the controversy.

“The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

The letter was hailed as a “big win for free speech” by House Judiciary Republicans, who shared the letter on X.

“Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 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,” they said.

The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button