By The Diary
27 Aug 2024, 01:28 AM EDT
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg denounced in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee the pressure he received from the Joe Biden administration during the pandemic to censor certain comments on Meta’s social media accounts.
Meta’s CEO admitted that the company caved in to government pressure, saying it “regrets” having collaborated with the Biden-Harris administration in censoring posts that not only addressed serious topics about the pandemic, but also satire and humorous content.
“The government pressure was wrong”
“In 2021, senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19-related content,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan.
“Including humor and satire, and they expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we disagreed,” the CEO added.
Ultimately, he explained, it was Meta’s decision whether or not to remove the content, but “the government’s pressure was wrong,” Zuckerberg shared, who regretted that the company had not been “more frank.”
At that time, some decisions were made that “with the benefit of hindsight and new information” Meta would not make today.
“Ready to fight back”
“As I told our teams at the time, I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in any direction, and we stand ready to fight back if something like this happens again,” he added.
In the letter, Zuckerberg says Meta’s goal is to “promote free speech and help people connect in a safe way.”
A year ago, Zuckerberg was required to provide the committee with thousands of documents on the subject as part of its investigation into content moderation on online platforms.
This situation has raised questions about the extent to which these media outlets can be influenced by government pressure, and how these dynamics affect freedom of expression on digital platforms.
With information from EFE
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