Mark Zuckerberg admits to Censorship Demands from WH: Trump Threatens to Imprison Meta CEO
On Monday, Meta CEO and founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg sent a bombshell letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan expressing his deep regret over Meta’s compliance with the Biden Administrations demands to censor COVID-19 related content in 2021.
The tech mogul admitted in his letter that Meta should have been more outspoken against government-led censorship, revealing that the White House urged Meta to remove COVID-related content—including humor and satire.
“There’s a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta.” Said Zuckerberg. “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 that he believes government censorship is wrong and that he regrets his company was 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.”
Zuckerberg continued in his letter to say that he feels strongly that his company should not compromise its content standards due to pressure from any administration, saying “we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
In a separate situation, Zuckerberg explained how the FBI warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election.
In a truly shocking statement, Zuckerberg said that in the fall of 2020, Meta was made aware of a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving the then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family.
Zuckerberg says Meta sent the New York Post story to ‘fact-checkers’ for review. Meta then demoted the story while waiting for a reply.
“It’s since been clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
In conclusion of the letter sent to the House Judiciary committee, Zuckerberg announced that he will not be contributing money to Democratic candidates in this election cycle.
According to reports, Former President Donald Trump made comments in his new book “Save America” in which he threatened to throw Mark Zuckerberg in prison if he cheats in the 2024 election.
“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison, as will others who cheat in the 2024 presidential election,” Trump said, according to Politico.
Zuckerberg recently made positive comments about the former President following his assassination attempt, saying that Trump standing up and pumping his fist in the air after being shot was “one of the most badass things” he’s ever seen in his life.