(Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the Biden administration has pressured the company to “censor” COVID-19 related content during the pandemic, appearing to refer to White House requests to remove misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.
In an Aug. 26 letter to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he regrets not speaking out about the pressure sooner, as well as other decisions he has made as owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to remove certain content.
In July 2021, Democratic President Joe Biden said social media platforms like Facebook were “killing people” by allowing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to be posted on their platforms. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Mursi and others publicly said the company was not doing enough to remove misinformation, making it harder to fight the pandemic and save lives. Facebook said at the time that it was taking “aggressive steps” to combat such misinformation. The Biden administration eventually toned down its criticism, even as lies about vaccines continue to spread on social media.
In a letter to the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Monday, Zuckerberg said Facebook had been “pressured” to “censor” content and would fight back if it faced such demands again.
“Over the course of 2021, Biden Administration officials, including from the White House, repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor specific COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed extreme frustration when we did not comply,” Zuckerberg said in the letter, posted on the Judiciary Committee's Facebook page.
“I believe the government pressure was misguided and I regret that we did not speak out more,” he wrote, “and I believe, with hindsight and new information, we would have made the choice not to do so today.”
The White House said in a statement that the administration encouraged responsible behavior to protect public health and safety in the face of the deadly pandemic.
“Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe tech companies and other private actors should consider the impact of their actions on the American people and make autonomous choices about the information they provide.”
Zuckerberg has recently sought to appeal to conservative users, praising Republican candidate Donald Trump's handling of the assassination attempt and appearing on a right-wing podcast. Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is a longtime ally of Trump.
In a Facebook post, the Judiciary Committee called the letter “a major victory for free speech” and said Zuckerberg acknowledged that “Facebook has been censoring Americans.”
Zuckerberg also said in the letter that he would not be making donations to support election infrastructure for this year's presidential election so that he would “not play any role” in voting in November.
During the last election, held in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, the billionaire donated $400 million to support election infrastructure through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic venture he launched with his wife, but the move drew criticism and lawsuits from some groups who saw it as partisan.
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Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington and Gunaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis
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