US government asks Facebook to censor COVID-19 posts

Mark Zuckerberg said the government The US has put pressure on Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19.. The executive director of Meta noted that officials from the Joe Biden administration They didn’t need specific content about the pandemic, So they pressured the company to remove them from all of its platforms.

In a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta had bowed to pressure from the U.S. government to censor content related to COVID-19. The Facebook co-founder said senior government officials, including some White House officialsThey were persistent with the company.

“In 2021, senior Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed great disappointment with our teams when we did not comply,” said Meta’s CEO.

The company’s CEO said government pressure was wrong, although Whether or not to remove the content was Meta’s decision.“We are accountable for our decisions, including the COVID-19-related changes we made to our app as a result of this pressure,” he added.

In a letter sent in response to an investigation into content moderation on online platforms, Zuckerberg expressed regret over the events that took place and assured that such things would not happen again.“I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in any direction, and we are prepared to fight back if something like this happens again.”

Facebook Censorship Goes Beyond COVID-19, Says Mark Zuckerberg

Another important point that stands out in the letter concerns Hunter Biden’s Laptop Scandal. Article from New York Post He spoke about an alleged hard drive containing information about the dirty deeds of Joe Biden’s son. The reports were censored on almost all platforms. accusing it of being a disinformation campaign originating in Russia.

Mark Zuckerberg said the FBI warned them about a possible disinformation operation ahead of the 2020 election. New York Post will be sent to the inspectors for verification and They downgraded his rating to limit his visibility..

“It has since become clear that this report was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have downplayed the story,” Zuckerberg said. “We have changed our policies and processes to ensure this does not happen again; for example, we no longer temporarily downgrade ratings in the U.S. while we wait for fact-checkers.”

Zuks added that created mechanisms to guarantee transparency of information as part of their platforms in events such as the pandemic or the presidential elections. Meta says the initiative was not designed to benefit any political party. “My goal is to be neutral and not to play one role or another,” Meta’s boss said.