Mark Zuckerberg says he ‘regrets’ deleting COVID-19 posts due to government ‘pressure’
Aug. 27 (UPI) – In a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Monday, Mark Zuckerberg said he should have been clearer about pressure from the White House to delete certain Covid-19-related content that was deemed offensive.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Republican of Ohio), Zuckerberg said Biden administration officials had “repeatedly pressured” Meta, the parent company of social media platform Facebook, to “censor” COVID-19-related content that he said contained “humor and satire.”
Zuckerberg added that the administration shared “a lot of frustration” with teams at Meta when they disagreed on content decisions, but said the final decision on whether or not to remove content rests with the company.
However, he said that while the company was “responsible” for its decisions, including removing COVID-19 content, he believed “the government pressure was wrong.”
“I regret that we didn’t talk more openly about this,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think we made some decisions that, in hindsight and with new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
“As I told our colleagues at the time, I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any government from any quarter – and we are ready to fight back if it happens again.”
Meta said it removed 20 million pieces of content globally in 2021 that violated its COVID-19-related disinformation policies and removed 3,000 accounts, pages and groups that repeatedly violated the related rules.
The Republican House Judiciary Committee, which posted the letter on its Facebook page, called it a “major victory for free speech.”
The White House responded to the letter in a statement to Politico, saying it “encourages responsible action to protect public health and safety” after “facing a deadly pandemic.”
“Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe that technology companies and other private actors should consider the impact of their actions on the American people while making independent decisions about the information they present,” it said.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June dismissed a lawsuit brought by two politicians and five social media users, overturning a lower court decision that would have restricted interaction between government officials and social media companies.
They had alleged that the federal government had pressured social media platforms to suppress free speech related to Covid-19 as well as the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterm elections under the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court ruled that they were not entitled to do so because they had not connected the social media restrictions to the government’s communications with the platforms.
