Mark Zuckerberg says White House pressured Meta over Covid-19 content

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg accused the Biden administration of pressuring the social media group to censor certain Covid-19 content during the pandemic and said he intended to be politically neutral this election cycle.

In a letter addressed to House judiciary committee chair Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote that senior Biden officials had repeatedly pressured Meta s team for months to censor some Covid-19 content, including humour and satire.

I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it, he wrote in the letter, which was posted on X by the committee on Monday. 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 also reiterated that he would not make another contribution to support electoral infrastructure via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic group. Past donations totalled more than $400mn and were made to non-profit groups including the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life. They were intended to make sure local election jurisdictions would have appropriate voting resources during the pandemic, he said. But he added that they had been interpreted as benefiting one party over the other .

My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle, Zuckerberg wrote.

The comments mark an unexpected public concession from Zuckerberg that the White House had attempted to sway its moderation policies and enforcement processes, and a slight against Democrats in the lead-up to November s election.

via www.ft.com

Maybe Zuck knows something we don’t.