Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a letter with the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, telling its members that he regrets not speaking out more on “government pressure” his company received to take down COVID-19-related content.
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
Zuckerberg said in the letter that officials with the Biden administration had “repeatedly pressured” his company, which owns and operates the social media sites Facebook and Instagram, to “censor” content in 2021.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken,” he wrote to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “Like I said to our teams at the time, 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.”
He went on to write that the company “shouldn’t have demoted” a New York Post story about corruption allegations involving the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election while waiting for fact-checkers to review it.
Since this occurred, Zuckerberg says Meta has updated its policies and processes, including no longer demoting content in the U.S. as it goes through its fact-checking process.
The CEO went on to write that he also wouldn’t make contributions to local jurisdictions to support election infrastructure this year, as his efforts, though meant to be “non-partisan,” were heavily criticized by Republicans as favoring the opposition.
“Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other,” Zuckerberg said. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.”
In a post to X, the House Judiciary’s Republican members celebrated the letter from Zuckerberg, calling it a “big win for free speech.”
“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,” the panel wrote on X.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok