Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a Monday letter to federal lawmakers that the Biden administration repeatedly put pressure on Meta to “censor” some content about COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.
In the letter, addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), the Meta CEO said that he believes “the government pressure was wrong” and that he regrets “that we were not more outspoken about it” when it happened in 2021.
“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 said.
The executive also explained that he intends to be politically “neutral” this election cycle, and has no plans to make contributions to nonprofits to support state election infrastructure. The billionaire and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than $400 million to fund similar efforts during the 2020 election.
The donations were “designed to be non-partisan,” Zuckerberg said, but were interpreted as left-leaning by Republicans, who labeled the funds “Zuck-bucks.”
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or to even appear to be playing a role,” he said. “So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
Zuckerberg also provided a specific example of censorship by the company, saying they should not have temporarily “demoted” a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election. He said that company officials made the decision to bury the story after the FBI warned them of a potential Russian disinformation campaign against the Bidens.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta has since put new policies and practices into place to ensure it does not repeat the incident—“for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers,” he said.
The unusual public concession was trumpeted over by the House Judiciary Committee, which posted the full letter to social media.
“Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story,” the panel crowed in a tweet.
“Mark Zuckerberg also tells the Judiciary Committee that he won’t spend money this election cycle. That’s right, no more Zuck-bucks. Huge win for election integrity.”
In his own tweet, Jordan called the letter a “big win for free speech.”
A Meta spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the letter on Monday, that the letter spoke for itself. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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