Mark Zuckerberg ADMITS censoring for Joe Biden in bombshell letter and whines about ‘pressure’ from White House

Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the Biden administration was “wrong” to require Facebook to censor “COVID disinformation” during the pandemic.

Meta CEO wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that the company will oppose any future attempts at censorship, and admitted that the company had “downgraded” stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

He wrote that the White House “has repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and has expressed significant frustration with our teams when we have not agreed.”

He said this pressure was “wrong” and said he regretted “that we have not been more open about it”.

“We made choices that, given what we know now and the new information, we would not make again,” he added.

“I am convinced that we should not neglect our substantive standards because of pressure from any government. And we are prepared to intervene if something like this happens again.”

A White House spokesperson told DailyMail.com in a statement that the Biden administration’s policy is aimed at encouraging big tech companies to behave responsibly.

“When faced with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe that technology companies and other private actors must consider the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present.”

A spokesperson for Meta told the Wall Street Journal the letter spoke for itself.

Zuckerberg also said Meta would not repeat what it did in 2020, when it funded nonprofits to finance local election campaigns, a move Republicans criticized as “Zuckerbucks” aimed at helping liberals.

He and his wife Priscilla Chan donated nearly $420 million to nonprofits that helped organize and provide infrastructure for the 2020 election, largely favoring Democratic districts.

Zuckerberg, 37, and Chan, 36, donated $419.5 million to The Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and The Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). The report said the donations were made under specific conditions.

Using the donations, both CTCL and CEIR sent funds to local governments to implement administrative procedures, voting methods, data sharing agreements, and outreach programs for the 2020 elections.

Analysis shows that counties where Biden won were three times more likely to receive funding from the organizations than counties where Trump won. In addition, Democrats in key swing states reportedly got a big boost by promoting practices that typically benefit their votes, such as mail-in voting.

In the letter to the Justice Committee, Zuckerberg acknowledges that there is bias and promises that he will not do it again next time.

“Despite the analyses I have seen to the contrary, I know some people believe this work has favored one party over the other,” he wrote.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play any role whatsoever, or even appear to play any role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”

In April 2020, Facebook announced that it would impose restrictions on “harmful misinformation about COVID-19.”

That included attempts to claim that the so-called “lab leak” theory was true. Within a year, the company reversed the decision.

He also admitted that the company “should not have downgraded” the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Democrats and members of the liberal media claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” in the run-up to the election, leading to social media censoring the story.

In June 2024, federal prosecutors used the laptop as evidence in the ongoing federal weapons trial of the eldest son in Delaware, ending questions about its authenticity.

“It has since become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect we should not have undervalued the story,” Zuckerberg wrote.

In a statement to X, Jordan called this a “great victory for freedom of expression.”

In February 2021, the company announced it would expand its crackdown to include claims that the virus was man-made. In a blog post, Facebook said it would not allow conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines.

The social network’s about-face comes on the same day that President Joe Biden asked his intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” to track the origins of the coronavirus.

In 2020, claims by the Trump administration that the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab were met with skepticism by the mainstream media, which seemed to believe the pathogen was transmitted from bats to humans.

Democrats and anti-Trump commentators in the press accused the then-president and his administration of spreading a theory that China deliberately created the coronavirus to distract from tackling the spread of the disease in the US.

However, reports have surfaced of a cover-up surrounding the origins of the virus, leading to renewed investigation into the matter.

In October 2021, it was revealed that Facebook researchers had extensive knowledge of the coronavirus and that there was misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine in the company’s apps. Yet they did little to combat the coronavirus, let alone share the information with the White House.

Documents presented by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen reveal that multiple studies have produced some mixed numbers about the types of users most likely to share fake news.

Lawmakers, academics and the White House urged Facebook to make such information public.

Facebook employees also knew that there was a lot of misinformation circulating on social media about the coronavirus, creating “echo chamber-like effects” that ultimately reinforced vaccine hesitancy.

The trove of documents shows that Facebook carefully examined how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also reveal that rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions to counter anti-vaccine content on the site, to no avail.

Internal discussions at Facebook were revealed in disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Frances Haugen, legal counsel to a former Facebook employee and whistleblower.