Zuckerberg Says He Regrets Demoting COVID-19 Content

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, on Jan. 31, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook was pressured by the federal government to censor COVID-19 content and that he now regrets bowing to those demands.

In an Aug. 26 letter sent to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the tech billionaire wrote that senior officials from the Biden administration pressured his social media company to censor COVID-19 information.

“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,” he said.

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

Zuckerberg did not reveal a specific example of the type of information the federal government allegedly tried to suppress.

Social media platforms, including Facebook, censored content they deemed misinformation about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, lockdowns, or vaccines or that otherwise went against its policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Zuckerberg, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, he doubts the same decisions would be made today. He claimed the platform was ready to push back if the government tried to interfere again.

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

“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.”

During the last election, the billionaire contributed $400 million via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropy venture, to support election infrastructure.

“The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a global pandemic,” he wrote in the letter.

Zuckerberg said he would not make contributions to support electoral infrastructure in this year’s election in order to “not play a role one way or another, or to even appear to play a role” in the November vote.

The Epoch Times contacted the White House for comment on Zuckerberg’s allegations but did not receive a response by publication time.

Chris Summers contributed to this report.