"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."
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted on Monday that the Biden-Harris administration pressured the platform to censor Americans, and that he went along with it and did their bidding, censoring and suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story of October 2020, and other things.
In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote that "There's a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position." He emphasized that the platform is "about promoting free speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way."
Then he dropped the bomb that "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."
"Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things," the House Judiciary Committee said in response to the letter, "1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story. Big win for free speech."
The letter was a result of Jordan and the Judiciary Committee's investigation into the alleged campaign by the Biden-Harris administration. Jordan has released numerous Facebook files exposing the censorship scheme and pressure by the administration.
"Ultimately," he continued, "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. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were 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. He said that at the time, he told his teams that he felt "strongly" that the platform "should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction." He wrote that the platform is "ready to push back if something like this happens again."
Zuckerberg also confirmed that the FBI "warned" the platform "about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election." It was revealed in the Twitter files that then-Twitter safety director Yoel Roth attended a meeting in Aspen with representatives from the FBI, who laid out a hypothetical in which a Russian "disinfo campaign" would launch a fake story about a discoverd Hunter Biden laptop in an attempt to discredit Biden's campaign.
Zuckerberg confirmed in the letter that the impetus for the platform to censor and suppress the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop was a direct result of the FBI's warnings. "It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation," he said, "and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story." He assured Jordan that the platform has changed their policies and "no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers."
Zuckerberg went on to discuss his relationship to the last election cycle, saying "I want to address the contributions I made during the last presidential cycle to support electoral infrastructure. The idea here as to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic." These, he said "were designed to be non-partisan—spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities."
He said that he knows "that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other." His goal, he said in conclusion, "is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or even to be playing a role. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle." Zuckerberg recently told Donald Trump, who he said was a "badass" after the July 13 assassination attempt, that he won't be supporting Democrats in 2024.
In a letter to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote that "There's a lot of talk right now around how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position." He emphasized that the platform is "about promoting free speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way."
Then he dropped the bomb that "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."
"Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things," the House Judiciary Committee said in response to the letter, "1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story. Big win for free speech."
The letter was a result of Jordan and the Judiciary Committee's investigation into the alleged campaign by the Biden-Harris administration. Jordan has released numerous Facebook files exposing the censorship scheme and pressure by the administration.
"Ultimately," he continued, "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. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were 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. He said that at the time, he told his teams that he felt "strongly" that the platform "should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction." He wrote that the platform is "ready to push back if something like this happens again."
Zuckerberg also confirmed that the FBI "warned" the platform "about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election." It was revealed in the Twitter files that then-Twitter safety director Yoel Roth attended a meeting in Aspen with representatives from the FBI, who laid out a hypothetical in which a Russian "disinfo campaign" would launch a fake story about a discoverd Hunter Biden laptop in an attempt to discredit Biden's campaign.
Zuckerberg confirmed in the letter that the impetus for the platform to censor and suppress the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop was a direct result of the FBI's warnings. "It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation," he said, "and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story." He assured Jordan that the platform has changed their policies and "no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers."
Zuckerberg went on to discuss his relationship to the last election cycle, saying "I want to address the contributions I made during the last presidential cycle to support electoral infrastructure. The idea here as to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic." These, he said "were designed to be non-partisan—spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities."
He said that he knows "that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other." His goal, he said in conclusion, "is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or even to be playing a role. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle." Zuckerberg recently told Donald Trump, who he said was a "badass" after the July 13 assassination attempt, that he won't be supporting Democrats in 2024.
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Comments
2024-08-27T06:08-0400 | Comment by: Dean
No surprises here. We saw it in action for the past four years. Then along came Musk who exposed it.