Biden administration 'repeatedly pressured' Meta to censor COVID-19 content, claims Mark Zuckerberg
In a bombshell allegation Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that the social media platform was ¡°pressured¡± by the US government to censor content related to?COVID-19 during the pandemic.?Zuckerberg, who in a letter to US House Judiciary Committee expressed regret over not being more vocal about this issue at the time, and also said that some decisions made under this pressure would not be repeated today.
'Biden administration repeatedly pressured us'
"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. 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 said in the letter.
Mark Zuckerberg's letter?
The official X account of the House Committee on the Judiciary of the Republicans posted Zuckerberg's letter on the social media platform saying:
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Zuckerberg on Hunter Biden laptop controversy?
In the letter, Zuckerberg further said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned?Meta?about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family, following which the story of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy was demoted.
Also read:?Hunter Biden, Son of US President, Enters Guilty Plea for Tax Crimes
'Wrong to demote Hunter Biden story'
In the letter, Zuckerberg, the fourth richest man in the world, admitted that it was not Russian disinformation and it was wrong to demote the story.
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. It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," the letter said.
For more news and current affairs?from around the world, please visit?Indiatimes News.
