Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter on Monday that the Biden-Harris administration consistently exerted pressure on his company, which encompasses Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other platforms, to censor content that is protected by free speech.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) this week, Zuckerberg disclosed that his objective was to remain impartial and refrain from advocating for or against any political party or ideology.
He stated that he does not wish to appear to be performing a role and will not be making any political contributions.
“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. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.” Zuckerberg said in a letter.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that. with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. 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 continued.
He stated that the company made a mistake by temporarily demoting a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story. We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S while waiting for fact-checkers.” Zuckerberg added.
This decision was made after officials falsely indicated that the laptop was part of a “Russian disinformation operation.”
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