Did Biden’s White House pressure Mark Zuckerberg to censor COVID content?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has accused United States President Joe Biden’s administration of pressuring his team to censor content on the COVID-19 pandemic in a letter that Republicans have latched on to as alleged evidence of the administration cracking down on free speech.

Zuckerberg said it was “wrong” of the government to pressure social media platforms. He said he regretted buckling to the pressure. The testimony from one of the world’s most influential tech titans comes amid a heated presidential election campaign. Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, have long accused social media platforms of censoring them, and Zuckerberg’s comments are likely to fuel their assertions.

What has Zuckerberg said in his letter?

Zuckerberg wrote the letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, saying White House officials pressured his teams “for months to censor certain COVID-19 content”.

The letter pertains to an ongoing probe that the Republican-majority committee is conducting on online content moderation.

The letter detailed that the COVID-19 content censored due to pressure from the Biden administration included humour and satire and that the officials “expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree”.

He acknowledged that it was his and his team’s decision to cave in to the pressure.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he says in the letter.He added that he feels strongly that he should not compromise on content standards “due to pressure from any Administration in either direction”, concluding that he will push back in case of a similar instance moving forward.

In July 2021, Biden said social media platforms such as Meta-owned Facebook are “killing people” with COVID-19 misinformation. Though he rescinded his statement a few days later, he maintained that Facebook was allowing the spread of misinformation.

What kind of COVID content have social media platforms been accused of censoring?

In February 2021, Facebook updated its policy on COVID content. It published a statement, saying it was expanding “the list of false claims we will remove to include additional debunked claims about the coronavirus and vaccines” after consulting leading health bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO).

Under this policy, Facebook took down posts claiming that COVID-19 was a man-made virus, manufactured and leaked from a lab in China’s Wuhan. Amid speculation of how COVID originated, some scientists said the lab leak theory deserved further investigation, while many others debunked it.

In February 2023, The Wall Street Journal acquired a classified report from the US Department of Energy stating the virus was probably the result of a leak from a lab. In March 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency assessed that a lab leak from Wuhan was likely the cause of the outbreak. These revelations bolstered the argument of those who said the initial censorship had been wrong.

Content that suggested that vaccines were not safe was also pulled down. Meta said more than 20 million posts were removed from Facebook and Instagram, another social media site owned by it, between the beginning of the pandemic and the summer of 2021.

It also added warning labels on more than 190 million posts about the virus that third-party fact-checkers had flagged as false or lacking context.

How has the White House responded?

US media reported that the White House released a statement in response, saying: “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present,” it added.

What did Zuckerberg say about Hunter Biden’s laptop?

After talking about government pressure to censor COVID-19 content, Zuckerberg’s letter suggested that security agencies also tried to influence Facebook’s policies on a political bombshell story.