Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said he regrets not speaking out more forcefully about the pressure his company received from President Joe Biden’s administration to “censor” content related to the COVID pandemic, adding that he would push back against similar efforts in the future.
In a letter addressed to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which published the correspondence in full on its social media accounts, Zuckerberg said senior officials in Biden’s administration, including the White House, repeatedly urged the company “to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“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.
In a statement, the White House said their administration “encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety” during the height of the pandemic.
“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” the White House said.
Zuckerberg also said the company shouldn’t have temporarily limited the distribution of a New York Post story about corruption allegations concerning Hunter Biden, the president’s son, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which the FBI had warned could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign targeting Biden’s family.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he wrote. “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.”
House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee celebrated Zuckerberg’s letter, calling it a “big win for free speech.”
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg added that he wouldn’t be making financial contributions to electoral infrastructure this season, saying his past investment in the area through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a non-profit founded by him and his wife, Priscilla Chan, was misconstrued.
“They were designed to be non-partisan spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities,” he said. “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another or to even appear to be playing a role.”
