Mark Zuckerberg submitted a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday stating that in 2021, Meta censored certain Covid-19 content on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms it owns.
The letter was in response to the committee’s ongoing investigation of how the federal government plays into content moderation choices made by tech companies.
Meta made the move in response to repeated, months-long pressure from the Biden Administration, including the White House, Zuckerberg disclosed. Senior Biden Administration officials “expressed a lot of frustration” when Meta’s teams didn’t initially agree with the demands to take down content, including satirical and humorous posts.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken 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 some posts, and “we own our decisions,” Zuckerberg stated.
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The White House publicly called out Facebook as a place for Covid misinformation in 2021, with President Joe Biden stating that Facebook and other social platforms were “killing people” with false claims.
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 prepared to fight back if similar requests for content moderation come up again from any administration affiliated with any political party.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Zuckerberg’s letter also said that, in 2020, Meta demoted a New York Post story about corruption allegations related to Joe Biden’s family while waiting for fact-checkers. The FBI had warned Meta about a possible Russian disinformation campaign about the Biden family before the 2020 election, leading to the demotion.
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After the investigation, Meta discovered that the report wasn’t linked to Russian disinformation. The company has since overhauled its policies to make sure a mistake like that 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 that ended June 30. That was above the $38.3 billion analysts expected.
