Mark Zuckerberg admits Biden admin pressured Meta to censor COVID-19 content

"My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another," he said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Pressure from Biden admin?

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a big revelation about censoring COVID-19 content.

In 2021, senior offices from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 contents including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, his letter read.

He said government pressure was wrong, adding that he regrets they were not outspoken about it.

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 of something like this happens again, the Meta CEO said.

In another instance, Zuckerberg said the FBI warned Meta about a possible Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in theme up to the 2020 election.

That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply, he said.

He said it has been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, "we shouldn't have demoted the story."

Zuckerberg said Meta has changed its policies and processes to make sure this will not happen again.

He also clarified donations he made during the last presidential cycle, noting these were to support electoral infrastructure.

My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle, Zuckerberg said.

What do you think about this?

Source: House Judiciary Committee GOP