Zuckerberg says Biden officials 'pressured' Meta to 'censor'

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg alleged that Facebook was “pressured” by the U.S. government to censor content related to COVID-19 during the global pandemic and that he regrets the company’s decision to accede to the demands.

“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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives. And while it was Meta’s decision whether to remove content, he continues, “the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

During the pandemic, Facebook officials drew ire from critics of lockdowns, vaccines and masking mandates because it removed certain posts, saying they contained misinformation related to the virus or otherwise went against its policies. In all, Facebook took down more than 20 million pieces of content in just over a year. Zuckerberg joins other social media executives, including Jack Dorsey, former CEO of blogging platform Twitter, in lamenting past instances of content moderation that, in their view, went too far.