Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Government Pressure to Censor COVID-19 Content

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter that the Biden administration had pressured the company to “censor” COVID-19 content during the pandemic, apparently referring to White House requests to take down misinformation.

“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,” states the letter to Jim Jordan, the head of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee. It is dated August 26, 2024.

Zuckerberg stated, “I believe the government pressure was wrong,” and expressed regret for not being more outspoken about it. During the pandemic, Facebook implemented misinformation alerts for users who commented on or liked posts that contained false COVID information. Posts criticizing COVID vaccines were also deleted. In the 2020 US presidential election campaign, President Biden accused social media platforms of “killing people” for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted.

“I think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” added Zuckerberg. “I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction. And we are ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

Zuckerberg also mentioned that the FBI had previously warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation regarding the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election, resulting in the demotion of the story on Meta’s social media platforms. However, it became clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation. “In retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” said Zuckerberg.

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” concluded the Meta CEO, stating the company will “no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.”