Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has said he regrets being pressured by the US government to censor Covid-related posts on Facebook and Instagram during the pandemic.
Zuckerberg said senior White House officials in Joe Biden's administration “repeatedly pressured” Facebook and Instagram's parent company Meta “to censor certain Covid-19 content” during the pandemic.
“In 2021, senior officials in the Biden administration, including the White House, applied persistent pressure on our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed great disappointment to our teams when we did not agree,” he said in a letter to Jim Jordan, the head of the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives. “I believe the government pressure was misplaced.”
During the pandemic, Facebook issued misinformation alerts to users when they commented on or liked posts that contained false information about Covid.
The company also removed posts criticizing Covid vaccines, and suggesting the virus was developed in a Chinese lab.
In the 2020 US presidential election campaign, Biden accused social media platforms such as Facebook of “killing people” by allowing misinformation to be posted about coronavirus vaccines.
“I think we made some choices that, given past events and new information, we wouldn't have made today,” Zuckerberg said. “I'm sorry we weren't more vocal about that.
“As I told our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in any direction. And we are prepared to push back if something like this happens again.”
Zuckerberg also said Facebook “temporarily removed” a story about the contents of a laptop owned by the president's son, Hunter Biden, following the FBI's warning that Russia was preparing a misinformation campaign against Biden.
Zuckerberg wrote that it's now clear the story was not misinformation, and that “in retrospect, we should not have downplayed the story.”
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee called Zuckerberg's admission a “huge victory for free speech” in a post on the committee's Facebook page.
The White House defended its actions during the pandemic, saying it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”
“Our position has been clear and consistent,” it said. “We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects of their actions on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”