For years, right-wing media and conservative politicians have falsely claimed that social media platforms like Facebook are biased against them and censor their content, even though data from Media Matters and others prove the opposite.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court also rejected vague allegations that the government had attempted to censor a group of people whose content had been removed or suppressed on social media. The court found that the individuals had not shown that the government had harmed them and appeared to allow the Biden administration to order the platforms to remove misinformation.

Meta’s letter appears to follow the platform’s pattern of capitulating to pressure from the right. The company has also backtracked on efforts it made to combat misinformation after the 2020 election. Since early 2022, Meta has gradually returned to old policies and practices, restoring previously suspended political candidates’ accounts and vowing not to fact-check them.

Right-wing media figures – particularly at Fox News – claimed Zuckerberg’s letter was proof that Facebook was censoring conservatives. Some called it a violation of the First Amendment:

• Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier said there was “total censorship,” comparing Facebook’s removal of content to the Taliban’s ban on women speaking in public. Saphier said, “This week we learned that the Taliban banned women from speaking in public. And that headline has already disappeared, because that’s the kind of human rights abuses we expect in Islamic republics, communist countries. Not in our democratic republic. And that’s exactly what happened here: total censorship, total removal of our First Amendment rights.”
• Infowars host Alex Jones posted the letter, saying Zuckerberg had “collaborated with the Biden-Harris administration to censor Covid-era information online,” adding, “The rats are fleeing the sinking ship.”
• Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy said the letter shows that the “government is putting pressure and intimidating the tech companies into taking action,” and host Bret Baier responded that “there is a desire to continue the censorship.” He added, “The question is whether this letter is the beginning of opening eyes and showing how much that is happening.”
• Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson published the letter, writing: “Zuckerberg just exposed the machine – and told the censors to fuck off.” He added that the letter was a “good start.”
• Right-wing streamer Patrick Bet-David posted that Zuckerberg’s letter showed that Facebook “collaborated with the Biden/Harris administration to censor Americans.”
• Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich said, “It’s nice that (Zuckerberg) is admitting they were wrong. Hopefully they won’t do that again. But he also played a very big role in helping the government do this as a result of this censorship policy.” Pavlich claimed that the Biden administration “essentially used social media companies, including Facebook, as proxies to censor Americans and violate their First Amendment rights by pressuring them to remove factual information from the internet, particularly when it came to reporting on COVID-19 that went against the Biden administration’s agenda.”