Mark Zuckerberg regrets censoring information for Biden admin, faces calls to be held 'accountable'

WASHINGTON, DC: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his regret in helping President Joe Biden's administration to censor information on social media platforms owned by him, including Facebook and Instagram, in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, August 26.

He also announced that he would not be making any election contribution in the 2024 election cycle as he intended to “be neutral and not play a role one way or another” for either any political party or ideology.

Mark Zuckerberg's letter to Judiciary Committee

Addressing committee Chair Rep Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his letter, "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.”

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he continued.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

Zuckerberg also acknowledged that his company temporarily demoted a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election because the FBI informed them that it was part of a “Russian disinformation operation.”

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he added

. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.”

Mark Zuckerberg on censoring Hunter Biden's laptop story

The subject of censoring the laptop story on Facebook was discussed by the platform owner Mark Zuckerberg during his earlier appearance on 'The Joe Rogan Experience'.

Zuckerberg shared that members of his team were contacted by FBI agents ahead of the 2020 election, asking them to be on high alert since there was "a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election."

He highlighted that Meta followed a different protocol than X (Twitter) while dealing with controversial content.

"What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all. We didn't do that. What we do is... if something is reported to us as potentially important misinformation, we also have a third-party fact-checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false," he explained.

Over the next five to seven days while the information was being authenticated, "the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it."

When Rogan asked how decreasing distribution worked, Zuckerberg said that the "ranking in the news feed was a little bit less. So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise."

Internet calls for Mark Zuckerberg to be held accountable

Netizens took to X to express their disappointment with Mark Zuckerberg on account of Facebook censoring information and asked to hold him "accountable" and prosecute him for election interference.

"He really should be held accountable same with the officials who were emailing him," wrote one social media user.

"He’s covering his butt. He knows Trump is going to win," said another.

"Too little, too late. You can’t commit treason, help overthrow the US Government, then just say you’re sorry when you get caught," stated one person.

"Mark Zuckerberg should be prosecuted," demanded another.

"Couldn’t agree more! Election interference is against the law! Arrest him!" exclaimed one individual.

"He’s not sorry. It’s one thing to fall for it. It’s another to censor people for their views. He knew it was wrong and went through with it anyway. We can never forget that," commented another.

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.