Meta CEO says company was 'pressured' by Biden admin to censor COVID-19 content

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter that the Biden administration had pressured the company to "censor" COVID-19 content during the pandemic, apparently referring to White House requests to take down misinformation.

"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," states the letter to Jim Jordan, the head of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee. It is dated August 26, 2024.

"I believe the government pressure was wrong," adds Zuckerberg, adding that he regrets not being more outspoken about it.

During the pandemic, Facebook implemented misinformation alerts for users who commented on or liked posts that were judged to contain false Covid information.

In addition, posts criticizing Covid vaccines were also deleted. In the 2020 US presidential election campaign, President Biden said social media platforms were "killing people" for allowing what they deemed as misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on the platforms.

"I think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today," added Zuckerberg. "I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction. And we are ready to push back if something like this happens again."

Zuckerberg also went on to state that the FBI previously warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The story was demoted on Meta's social media platforms.

However, it has since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation. "In retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," said Zuckerberg.

"We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again," concluded the Meta CEO. He stated the company will "no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.