I censored Biden family’s corruption, other unfavourable stories on Facebook after FBI, White House pressure: Mark Zuckerberg
“I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that…we wouldn’t make today,” said Mr Zuckerberg.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook censored a story exposing U.S. President Joe Biden’s family’s alleged corruption after being pressured by the White House and the FBI.
In a letter dated August 26 addressed to Republican Jim Jordan, House judiciary committee chair, circulated on social media, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook “demoted” a story exposing Mr Biden’s family corruption due to an earlier warning on potential Russian disinformation from the FBI.
“In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead-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,” Mr Zuckerberg said in the letter.
The Facebook czar added, “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.”
The Meta chief also said Facebook changed its enforcement of COVID-19-related content after Mr Biden’s goverment pressured them to censor content related to the global pandemic.
“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,” Mr Zuckerberg explained. “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.”
“I believe the government pressure was wrong,” Mr Zuckerberg stressed, “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.”
The Meta boss told “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.”
However, Mr Zuckerberg said he would not donate to election infrastructure this year because he wants to stay neutral.
Mr Biden’s government and the FBI have not responded to Mr Zuckerberg’s claims.