Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the Biden administration had pressured the company to “censor” content about Covid-19 during the pandemic, apparently referring to White House requests to remove misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.
In a letter dated August 26, Zuckerberg told the US House Judiciary Committee that he regretted not speaking out sooner about this pressure, as well as other decisions he had made as owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp around removing certain content.
In July 2021, Democratic President Joe Biden said social media platforms like Facebook “are killing people” for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on their platform.
Others, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, said publicly that the company was not doing enough to eliminate misinformation and was making it harder to fight the pandemic and save lives.
Facebook said at the time that it was taking “aggressive steps” to combat such misinformation. The Biden administration eventually softened its criticism, even as lies about vaccines continued to spread on social media.
In the letter sent Monday to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said his company was “pressured” to “censor” content and that it would fight back if it faced such demands again.
“In 2021, senior Biden Administration officials, including at the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain content about Covid-19, including humor and satire, and expressed significant frustration with our teams when we did not agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was posted by the Judiciary Committee on its Facebook page.
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Facebook said it was taking ‘aggressive measures’ to combat misinformation
“I think the pressure from the government was misguided and I regret that we were not more forthright about it,” he wrote. “I also think we made some decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we would not make today.”
The White House said in a statement that the administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety in the face of a deadly pandemic.
“Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe that technology companies and other private actors must take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent decisions about the information they present.”
Zuckerberg has recently tried to appeal to conservative users, calling Republican candidate Donald Trump’s response to an assassination attempt “incredible” and participating in right-wing podcasts. Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan is a longtime Trump ally.
In its Facebook post, the Judiciary Committee called the letter a “major victory for free speech” and said Zuckerberg had admitted that “Facebook censored Americans.”
In the letter, Zuckerberg also said he would not make any contributions to support election infrastructure in this year’s presidential election so as “not to play a role one way or another” in the November vote.
During the last election, which was held in 2020 during the pandemic, the billionaire contributed $400 million through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic company with his wife, to support election infrastructure, a move that sparked criticism and lawsuits from some groups who said the move was partisan.
With information from Reuters.
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