While many say this revelation is a big win for free speech, the Biden-Harris administration stands by its actions.
In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that the Biden administration “pressured” Meta to censor content related to COVID-19. This letter came as part of an ongoing House Judiciary Committee investigation and debate about the extent to which social media firms should moderate content.
The letter, which was posted on the House Judiciary Committee’s X profile, says, “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.” In August of 2021, Facebook said it had removed more than twenty million posts related to COVID-19. That same year, the White House criticized social media firms like Facebook for allowing COVID-19 misinformation to spread across their platforms.
While Zuckerberg admits his teams at Meta called the shots on what content should be taken down, he noted that the alleged “government pressure was wrong,’ and that the choices they made would be different today “with the benefit of hindsight and new information.” He added that he regrets not being more outspoken about the pressure put on them by the Biden-Harris administration, and, “we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
Zuckerberg also mentioned that the FBI contacted them about “a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma” during the 2020 election. When the New York Post story broke about corruption allegations of the Biden family with the discovery of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, his team temporarily demoted the story while fact-checkers reviewed it. He continued that now that it’s been made clear it was not Russian disinformation, he regrets taking those actions and confirms they now do not demote things in the U.S. while awaiting fact-checkers’ response. A 2022 poll by tippinsights concluded that 79% of Americans think the Biden laptop cover-up changed the election outcome.
The White House stood by its actions in a statement to Politico, saying, “Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present.”
Zuckerberg also mentioned in the letter that he will not be contributing to the 2024 election as he did in 2020, saying, “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role.” In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $400 million, which he called “Zuckerbucks”, to The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL). The CTCL then used this money to pay for grants to help election officials buy supplies and run elections during the COVID-19 pandemic in more than 2,500 locations nationwide.
According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), CTCL allocated $22.5 million in Zuckerbucks grants to Pennsylvania during the 2020 election. The state was also awarded an additional $13.5 million by the Center for Election Innovation and Research. FGA’s data shows that Pennsylvania counties that Biden won in 2020 received an average of $4.99 per registered voter, while counties Trump won only received $1.12 per registered voter. Its study also states that 92% of Zuckerbucks in Pennsylvania went to Democrat counties, and over 90% of counties that reportedly received Zuckerbucks saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset Republican votes.
Twenty-eight states, including Pennsylvania, have since banned private funds like Zuckerbucks from being used in election administration. Supporters of the ban argue that private donations could result in the donor or grant-making organization having too much influence over elections and could favor certain jurisdictions over others. Philadelphia City Commissioner told City & State, “If anything, it had nothing but positive effects on the election because it enabled us to get done sooner and to provide additional access to voters.”
In his letter, Zuckerberg stressed that Meta provided a dozen employees to be available for transcribed interviews as part of their cooperation with the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the Executive Branch’s interactions with social media and technology companies.
