Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that the U.S. government’s pressure on his social media platforms to remove certain COVID-19 content in 2021 was “wrong” and that he will resist similar actions in the future, according to a letter submitted to a U.S. congressional committee.
In the letter, which Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee disclosed and addressed to Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg addressed several issues related to content moderation on his platforms.
He also mentioned that he does not plan to repeat his previous funding efforts for U.S. election infrastructure ahead of this year’s presidential election, noting that such donations had faced strong criticism from Republicans.
Zuckerberg’s statement to the committee comes just over two months before a closely watched U.S. presidential election, with significant attention on the spread of online misinformation about the candidates.
On the pandemic, the Facebook founder stated that in 2021, the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”
“I believe this government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more vocal about it,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“I strongly believe we should not alter our content standards due to pressure from any administration, and we are prepared to resist if this happens again.”
Republicans celebrated the letter as a win; their House Judiciary Committee account on the social networking site X—previously known as Twitter—called it a “huge victory for free expression.”
Republicans in Congress have accused digital corporations and social media of stifling or banning conservative viewpoints, and they have been pursuing this strategy in recent months.
Zuckerberg further stated that he would not be continuing his COVID-era campaign of funding nonprofits that promote US election infrastructure since Republicans view such contributions as politicized.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or to even appear to be playing a role,” he stated.
The letter also discussed the controversy surrounding Facebook’s treatment of a New York Post report about US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Zuckerberg stated that the story had been “temporarily demoted,” while Facebook fact-checkers looked into the likelihood that it was the product of “a potential Russian disinformation operation.”
The CEO of Meta announced that the story was eventually determined not to be a part of this kind of operation and that the platform has modified its guidelines so that posts in the US are no longer removed while fact-checkers look into them.
