29. August 2024
In a letter to the US Judiciary Committee, Mark Zuckerberg complained that the Biden administration has exerted massive influence on Facebook. This puts him in the same dilemma as other operators of large media platforms. How free is it there?
The German constitution is crystal clear with regard to the press: “There shall be no censorship,” it says in Article Five. At the EU level, the sentence is worded a little more laboriously, but means the same thing: “Media freedom and media pluralism are essential components of democracy and of the fundamental rights of EU citizens,” says the European Council. And the US Bill of Rights states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press…”. Is there anything misleading about all of these statements?
Apparently so: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has now complained that Facebook had to withhold content from its users during the Corona pandemic that the White House did not want to see. In a letter to the US House Judiciary Committee, he complains that his company was “pressured” by the US government to censor content related to the virus during the Corona pandemic. “In 2021, senior officials in the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” he writes.
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