Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg said senior Biden administration officials pressured the social media company to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic, adding that he would push back if that happened again.
In a letter dated Aug. 26, Zuckerberg told the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that he regretted not speaking up about that pressure earlier, as well as some decisions the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner had made about the removal of certain content.
“In 2021, senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed great frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was posted by the Judiciary Committee on its Facebook page.
“I think the government pressure was wrong and I’m sorry we weren’t more honest about it,” he wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
The White House and Meta did not respond to a request for comment outside US business hours.
The letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the committee’s chairman and a Republican. In its Facebook post, the committee called the letter “a major victory for free speech” and said Zuckerberg had admitted that “Facebook censors Americans.”
In the letter, Zuckerberg also said he would not contribute to support the election infrastructure in this year’s presidential election so it “doesn’t play a role one way or another” in the November election.
During the last election, held in 2020 during the pandemic, the billionaire contributed $400 million through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic venture with his wife, to support election infrastructure, a move that drew criticism and lawsuits by some groups who said the move was partisan.
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