Zuckerberg Admits Biden Administration Pressured Facebook to Censor COVID-related Content

"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to censor content related to COVID-19 during the pandemic. Zuckerberg said he regretted not being more outspoken about the issue, and that he planned to push back if something similar happened in the future.

Zuckerberg made the comments in a letter to U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan. The committee shared the letter on X, commenting that Zuckerberg 'just admitted' the “Biden-Harris administration ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans...

In his letter, Zuckerberg said:

'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. …

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. …

… I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something happens again.'

... Zuckerberg didn’t provide specific examples of censorship that Facebook engaged in behind the scenes.

However, extensive documentation of Facebook censoring content at the government’s request was gathered through discovery by plaintiffs in the Murthy v. Missouri (initially Missouri v. Biden) and Kennedy v. Biden lawsuits. Both lawsuits allege the Biden administration coerced and encouraged social media companies to censor free speech."