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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
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 said he would no longer make a contribution to support electoral infrastructure via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic group, as he had previously done. The 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. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jordan, a top House Republican, has been leading a congressional investigation accusing the Biden administration, disinformation researchers and social media platforms of colluding in order to muzzle Americans, and conservative speech in particular.
It comes amid a broad global debate over the extent to which platforms should prioritise free speech or online safety, fuelled by posts by billionaire X owner Elon Musk, a self-declared free speech absolutist, and the weekend arrest of Telegram chief executive Pavel Durov in France over an investigation into alleged moderation failures on the messaging app.
Republican candidate and former US president Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against social media platforms for their perceived censorship of right-wing voices. In July, Trump warned on Truth Social, his social media platform, that if re-elected president he would “pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time”.
He then appeared to single out Zuckerberg, adding: “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”
Zuckerberg later said in a television interview that he thought Trump’s reaction to an assassination attempt on his life was “badass” but stopped short of endorsing him. Trump said Zuckerberg had called him to apologise over a moderation glitch that had occurred on the platform related to a photo of the attack, and claimed Zuckerberg told him he would not support a Democrat in the election out of respect.
In the letter posted on Monday, Zuckerberg also said Meta should not have “demoted” a New York Post story about a laptop belonging to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election, after the FBI warned of a potential Russian disinformation campaign against the Biden family. The story, Zuckerberg added, did not turn out to be Russian disinformation.
