Mark Zuckerberg says Meta was ‘pressured’ by Biden administration to censor Covid-related content in 2021
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said in a letter to the House Judiciary committee on Monday that his teams were “pressured” by the Biden White House to censor some content around the Covid-19 pandemic
Transcript
00:00Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of the social media company Meta,
00:04said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his teams were
00:08pressured by the Biden White House to censor some content around the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:14In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House,
00:20repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content,
00:25including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree,
00:31Zuckerberg said. In his letter to the Judiciary Committee,
00:35Zuckerberg said the pressure he felt in 2021 was wrong, and he came to regret that his company,
00:42the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with the
00:48benefit of hindsight and new information, there were decisions made in 2021 that wouldn't be made
00:54today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our
01:00content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction,
01:04and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again, Zuckerberg wrote.
01:09President Biden said in July of 2021 that social media platforms are
01:14killing people with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.