Mark Zuckerberg submitted a letter House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday stated that in 2021, Meta censored some Covid-19 content on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms it owns.
The letter was in response to the commission's investigation is ongoing how the federal government plays into the content moderation choices made by tech companies.
Meta made the move in response to months of repeated pressure from the Biden administration, including the White House, Zuckerberg revealed. Senior Biden administration officials “expressed great disappointment” when Meta's teams did not initially comply with requests to remove content, including satirical and humorous posts.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I'm sorry we weren't more open about it,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in January 2024. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Ultimately, it was Meta's decision to censor certain posts, and “we own our decisions,” Zuckerberg said.
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The White House Facebook called out publicly as a site for Covid disinformation in 2021, with President Joe Biden declaring that Facebook and other social platforms were “killing people“with false pretenses.
In hindsight, Zuckerberg said in the letter that Meta wouldn't make the same choices today that it did in 2021, and that the company is willing to fight back if similar content moderation demands come up again from any related administration. any political party. .
“As I told our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any administration in either direction — and we are prepared to back down if something like this happens again,” Zuckerberg wrote. .
Zuckerberg's letter also stated that, in 2020, Meta was demoted to one New York Post story about allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden's family pending fact-checkers. The FBI had warned Meta about a possible Russian disinformation campaign about the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election, leading to his demotion.
Upon investigation, Meta found that the report was unrelated to Russian disinformation. The company has since revised its policies to ensure such a mistake doesn't happen again, Zuckerberg assured the committee chairman in his letter.
Meta had better than expected earnings last month, with sales of $39.1 billion for the quarter ended June 30. That was above the $38.3 billion analysts were expecting.