Facebook founder ‘regrets’ suppressing science and election meddling

Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Sunday claimed to “regret” Facebook’s censorship practices that suppressed science during the COVID-19 pandemic and rigged the 2020 election.

Facebook’s war on scientific ‘misinformation’

Communications produced in 2022 revealed the steps Facebook executives took to make unapproved speech about COVID-19 “harder to find on our platform.” Any content about COVID-19 that fact-checkers declared as “partly false” and “missing context," Facebook treated as completely false. The company also considered any user connected to an “entity” that was de-platformed for wrong speech as “non-recommendable.”

The emails also showed that Facebook colluded with the federal government to overrule scientists and medical experts on COVID-19, like when the company “fact-checked” the British Medical Journal. But more than that, the social media giant actively approached the Biden administration several times for help in suppressing information.

In 2021, for example, Facebook executives asked CDC officials for help in debunking claims about the vaccine, including criticism of injecting infants with COVID-19 injections. The CDC was happy to oblige, deeming nearly every claim false, often without explanation except that “it is reasonable to assume these statements may lead to vaccine refusal.” 

“Thank you so much again, I can’t reiterate enough how helpful this is for us to remove these misinfo claims ASAP!” a Facebook executive gushed in an email to White House officials. 

Facebook also asked the White House how to defend vaccines after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be deadly. The White House responded that Facebook should change its algorithm to block any criticism of the injections.

Nearly all COVID-19 “misinformation” Facebook suppressed — such as the inefficacy of masks, the danger and inefficacy of mRNA vaccines, the origin of COVID-19, the inaccuracy of infection and mortality data, the danger and inefficacy of lockdowns — have since turned out to be true.

Nevertheless, Facebook zealously protected even allusions to the vaccine’s dangerous side effects, which included banning the hashtag #DiedSuddenly though it made no mention of the shots.

Overall, Facebook proved dutiful in enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 messaging, even removing a satirical “Dr. Fauci” account at the White House’s request.

Zuckerberg blames COVID-19 censorship on government pressure

On Sunday, Zuckerberg wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) that he has “regret” over how his company stifled scientific information during the pandemic, which he blamed on pressure from the Biden-Harris administration. 

“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,” Zuckerberg said in the letter. “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he continued.

Having previously blamed the company’s censorship on “the establishment,” Zuckerberg claimed the platform will resist any future pressure.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, 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 like this happens again.”

But science is only one field of speech that Facebook heavily policed.

How Facebook rigged the 2020 election

Meta and other tech giants such as Google have come under congressional scrutiny recently for their continued censorship of disfavored political views. This month, for example, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability opened a probe into Facebook after the platform labeled photos of President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt as inauthentic. Meta’s AI chatbot also falsely told users the assassination attempt never occurred. 

In a letter to Zuckerberg this month, Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) recalled the platform’s election interference in 2020, when Facebook colluded with the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. Studies after the election revealed that censorship of the story prevented 17% of voters in seven swing states from switching their votes to Trump.

Last year, Zuckerberg blamed the FBI for Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden exposé. However, while the FBI had indeed warned the social media company about allowing “Russian propaganda” on the platform, it was Facebook that ultimately decided to block the story.

Zuckerberg again blames the government

In his letter to Rep. Jordan, Zuckerberg again blamed the federal government — this time, the FBI.

“[T]he FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply.”

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he said. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.”

Zuckerberg addresses electoral contributions

Lastly, the Meta CEO addressed allegations that he violated federal laws when he spent $419 million on “election infrastructure” ahead of the 2020 election. The contributions were found to have benefited the Democratic Party, of which Zuckerberg is a member.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” he wrote in the letter. “So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”