After years of wrangling with the Biden administration over vaccine misinformation, Mark Zuckerberg has now accused the White House of “repeatedly” pressuring Facebook over months to censor “certain COVID-19 content” in 2021 that Facebook allegedly would not have removed without pressure.
In a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday, the Meta CEO claimed that senior officials in the Biden administration “expressed great frustration” when Facebook rejected certain requests to remove content. According to Zuckerberg, the Biden administration wanted to remove not only misinformation, but also “humor and satire.”
“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to remove the content, and we are responsible for our decisions, including the COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in response to that pressure,” Zuckerberg wrote, taking responsibility for his platform's actions.
However, if Facebook finds itself in the same situation again – no matter which presidency – Zuckerberg said his platform is now “ready to fight back” and resist any intransigence on content standards.
“I believe the government's pressure was wrong and I regret that we did not speak more clearly about this,” Zuckerberg said in his letter. At the same time, he admitted to downplaying the story about Hunter Biden's laptop and changing Facebook's policies to prevent something like this from happening again.
In a statement in the Seattle Times, the White House also seemed willing to reject Zuckerberg's allegations that Facebook had forced content removal.
“In the face of a deadly pandemic, this administration has called for responsible action to protect public health and safety,” the White House said. “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe technology companies and other private actors should consider the impact of their actions on the American people while making independent decisions about the information they present.”
Zuckerberg's letter is “a huge victory for free speech,” says Republican
Since Facebook's dispute with the Biden administration began, conservatives have increasingly accused Meta of censoring right-wing views, even fighting for an injunction that would prevent the Biden administration from contacting platforms like Facebook and allegedly pressuring them to remove content that Democrats oppose.
But the Supreme Court in June rejected allegations that the Biden administration forced social media platforms to censor their users by removing COVID-19 content. The majority ruled that Facebook “began suppressing plaintiffs' COVID-19 content” before the government's pressure campaign began, and therefore the platforms, not the Biden administration, bore responsibility for removing the posts.
In 2021, Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook had made an early commitment to removing COVID-19 misinformation and ramped up content removals right at the start of the pandemic, The New York Times reported. After just over a year of the pandemic, Facebook had removed more than 20 million pieces of content that violated its increasingly strict COVID-19 policies, Bloomberg reported.