According to Cointelegraph, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook was pressured by the Biden administration to censor COVID-19 content during the epidemic and expressed regret for this.
On August 26, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, expressing concerns about content review on social media platforms, and said that senior officials of the Biden administration repeatedly pressured the company to censor COVID-19 information, including humor and satire, in 2021.
Zuckerberg said that ultimately it was the Meta team that decided to censor content, but they made some choices they wouldn't make today. He believes the government pressure was misplaced and regrets not speaking out more clearly at the time.
He also mentioned that in 2020, the platform downgraded reports involving Russian disinformation and Hunter Biden's laptop while awaiting fact-checking, and as a result, it came under censorship. Since then, policies have been changed to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
Zuckerberg’s letter has drawn strong reactions from decentralization and free speech advocates. Gabor Gubacs, director of digital asset strategy at VanEck, shared the letter on the X platform and expressed her pleasure that Zuckerberg had made it public.
Utah Senator Mike Lee asked who wanted Zuckerberg's regrets to appear before the damage was done, rather than years later. Charlie Kirk, founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, expressed hope that American industry leaders would handle the matter properly.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk reiterated that his social media platform X supports all viewpoints within the law and called Zuckerberg's confession "a step in the right direction."