A major controversy has been sparked after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted, in a letter to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that the White House pressured him to remove content related to Covid-19 in 2021.
He said Zuckerberg In his letter, he wrote, “The government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more forthright.” He noted that he had made decisions that he would not have made today based on new information, and stressed that he had asked his team not to compromise on content standards because of the pressure, and that he was now prepared to respond if this situation happened again.
As for the content requested by the President’s administration Joe Biden Zuckerberg’s restriction – according to the letter – relates to satirical and mocking content about the Corona pandemic, as well as claims that the virus was produced in a Chinese laboratory. The company also deleted posts criticizing the Corona vaccine.
Zuckerberg also noted in his letter that Meta received warnings from the FBI about a potential Russian operation involving the Biden family in the run-up to the 2020 US election.
The White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter by saying, “When the administration faced a deadly pandemic, we encouraged responsible action to protect public health. Our position has been clear and consistent,” and expressed its belief that tech companies and other private parties should make independent choices about the information they publish.
Social media interaction
Zuckerberg’s admission sparked many comments on social media, some of which were monitored by the episode (2024/8/28) of the “Networks” program.
Shaqran said that Zuckerberg started speaking when Biden stepped down, and commented, “The day Biden left, he started speaking… The world is controlled by Mark Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and they are controlled by American intelligence, so the founder of the Telegram application was arrested because he tweets outside their control.”
A student’s account stated, “Censorship and leaking information are mandatory on any social networking site, and everyone has seen the subjugation of TikTok and the arrest of the founder and owner of Telegram… Only now, the X site is the only one out of context because of its owner and the mountains of money under his feet and his special relations with the American right and its current godfather.” Donald Trump“.
In Rashid’s opinion, “The left is floundering, weakening and losing its popularity, and in contrast, Trump and his party’s popularity has increased tremendously… So he said: Let me have lunch with them and give them the status of the victim and the poor so that people will accept what he did!!!”
According to Ali’s tweet, “The message came at a very sensitive time, as if it were a gift to Republicans who desperately need it to condemn Biden and his administration.”
It is noteworthy that Zuckerberg’s message received a response from Republicans. In a post on the X platform, the Republican group in the Judiciary Committee wrote that Zuckerberg admitted 3 things: First, that the Biden administration andKamala Harris (Democratic presidential candidate) pressured Facebook to increase surveillance of Americans.
Secondly, Facebook censored Americans, and thirdly, Facebook imposed restrictions on the Hunter Biden computer case, in reference to the 2020 New York Post article that spoke about corruption allegations related to the Biden family.
