DBT Bureau
Bengaluru, 27 August 2024
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee of the US said the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” Meta’s teams to censor Covid-related posts, reports said.
The letter also said that the platform had to make changes that “with the benefit of hindsight and new information,” they would not make today. He added that he regrets that he was not more outspoken about it.
“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. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure,” Zuckerberg said in the letter.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, 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 added.
Zuckerberg also said that he would remain neutral for the upcoming presidential elections. In a letter addressed to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday, he stated his goal is to avoid any political involvement. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” Zuckerberg wrote, according to a report from Business Insider.
