Expressed Regret for Meta’s Decisions that Favored Biden Campaign
In a letter penned to “Honorable Jim Jordan,” Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has openly admitted that he and others were guilty of politically biased censoring on Facebook. He also expressed regret that they had made decisions which, in hindsight, he could see favored the Biden family, and therefore the Democrat campaign during the 2020 election.
Zuck opened the letter by making note of the “Committee’s interest in content moderation on online platforms.” It makes one wonder just how much “interest” the US government has expressed in censoring and tracking online use by American citizens. As Zuckerberg writes, “There’s a lot of talk right now around how the US government interacts with companies like Meta.”
This development comes just as the Founder and CEO of Telegram sits in a French jail for his failure to censor users. Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris over the weekend on accusations that he allowed Telegram users too much free reign in what they posted. Telegram has long been a site where politically biased censoring was not an issue.
Freedom of Speech and the Right to Privacy is being curbed across the globe. Zuckerberg shared, “we regularly hear from governments around the world and others with various concerns around public discourse and public safety.” From his letter, it seems that he no longer wants politcally biased censoring to be a part of Facebook’s plan of action.
Zuck went on to speak of how the US government had pushed Meta to censor information about COVID-19, including humor and satire. He expressed regret that Facebook and Meta had not fought back more on the subject and had relented on silencing Americans during the Pandemic.
Zuckerberg then told Jordan, “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.”
He went on to expose how the US government had insisted that Facebook censor corruption allegations against the Biden family and apologized for giving in to that pressure also. He admitted demoting posts about the Biden family and allowing fact checkers to remove or censor those posts.
“We no longer temporarily demote things in the US while waiting for fact checkers, “he said. He then added that Meta has “changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Of course, it’s convenient that this decision comes after Biden has been pushed out of the White House.
Zuckerberg mentioned his contributions to “support electoral structure” in previous elections. Those contributions were made through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and he admits that some see that as benefiting one party over the other.
Since Zuckerberg wants to make it clear that he is “neutral” and doesn’t want to be seen as playing a role “one way or the other,” he does NOT plan on making similar contributions during this election cycle. Is it possible that politically biased censoring is no longer his thing? Or did Zuckerberg just find a way to absolve himself for election interference and simultaneously announce that he will NOT be supporting Kamala?
Image “Politically Biased Censoring” Credit: Meta
