Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has revealed that Facebook censored a story about an alleged corruption involving U.S. President Joe Biden’s family after receiving pressure from both the White House and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This revelation was made in a letter dated August 26, 2024 and addressed to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Jim Jordan, and circulated on the social media.
In the letter, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook “demoted” a story that exposed alleged corruption within the Biden family due to a warning from the FBI about potential Russian disinformation.
He detailed the situation, “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.”
He further acknowledged that the story was later confirmed not to be Russian disinformation, adding, “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 admission also extends to Facebook’s handling of COVID-19-related content, which Zuckerberg claims was influenced by pressure from the Biden administration.
“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,” Zuckerberg explained.
He added, “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.”
Zuckerberg expressed regret over the situation, stating, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, 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.”
He emphasised that Meta should not compromise its content standards due to pressure from any administration, adding, “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 also announced that he would not be donating to election infrastructure this year, indicating a desire to remain neutral in the political landscape.
As of the time of this report, there has been no response from President Biden’s administration or the FBI regarding Zuckerberg’s allegations.
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