Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Monday that the social media company was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor Americans. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook censored Americans and suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election.
On Monday, the House Judiciary GOP shared a letter Zuckerberg wrote to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). In the letter, Zuckerberg said, “There’s a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position.” The Facebook founder claimed that the social media platform is “about promoting free speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way.”
Zuckerberg added, “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
In the letter, Zuckerberg explained that it was “ultimately” Facebook’s decision whether to remove content from the social media platform and that the company took responsibility for its decisions, including policy enforcement related to COVID-19 posts in light of the Biden-Harris administration’s pressure.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
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In Monday’s letter, Zuckerberg also explained that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) “warned” Facebook about a “potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma” prior to the 2020 election. Zuckerberg said that the company sent The New York Post’s story on the Hunter Biden laptop to “fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply.”
Zuckerberg acknowledged that it has “since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation.” He added, “In retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
After receiving Zuckerberg’s letter, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee said Zuckerberg’s letter admitted that the Biden-Harris administration “pressured” the company to “censor Americans,” that the social media platform ultimately chose to censor Americans on social media, and that the company “throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.” House Republicans also described Zuckerberg’s letter as a “big win for free speech.”
