{"id":122276,"date":"2024-08-27T10:05:01","date_gmt":"2024-08-27T10:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/27\/zuckerberg-regrets-bowing-to-white-house-pressure-over-covid\/"},"modified":"2024-08-27T10:05:01","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T10:05:01","slug":"zuckerberg-regrets-bowing-to-white-house-pressure-over-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/27\/zuckerberg-regrets-bowing-to-white-house-pressure-over-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Zuckerberg regrets bowing to White House ‘pressure’ over Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Zuckerberg<\/div>


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Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets bowing to what he said was pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the US House of Representatives, he said senior officials, including some from the White House, pressured Meta to remove content in 2021.<\/p>\n

The White House has defended its actions saying it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety”.<\/p>\n

Mr Zuckerberg also asserted the firm censored content relating to Joe Biden’s son. Hunter, in the run-up to the 2020 US election, after the FBI warned it of “a potential Russian disinformation” operation into the Biden family, which turned out to be false.<\/p>\n

“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 humour and satire,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.<\/p>\n

“We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.<\/p>\n

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”<\/p>\n

He said he and Meta would be ready to “push back” if something similar happened in the future.<\/p>\n

Republicans called the letter, which is addressed to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the judiciary committee – which has been investigating content moderation on online platforms – a “big win for free speech<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

In a statement issued to the website Politico<\/a>, the White House stood by its actions:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr Zuckerberg’s Hunter Biden comments refer to a laptop abandoned by the president’s son at a repair shop in Delaware, first reported by the New York Post.<\/p>\n

The newspaper claimed emails found on the computer suggested his business abroad had influenced US foreign policy while his father was vice-president.<\/p>\n

This became a notable right-wing talking point in the US, and a point of contention as some social media platforms censored the content.<\/p>\n

“In retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.<\/p>\n

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”<\/p>\n

He also said he did not plan to make anymore contributions to supporting electoral infrastructure.<\/p>\n

In the 2020 election, he donated $400m (\u00a3302m) via his philanthropic Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which was intended to help government offices conduct the election during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

However, misinformation spread rapidly on social media accusing Mr Zuckerberg of effectively using a loophole to skirt maximum donation limits in a bid to get Mr Biden elected.<\/p>\n

“They were designed to be non-partisan,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.<\/p>\n

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role on way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role – so I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”<\/p>\n

But it won’t go unnoticed that his letter comes just a few months removed from the 2024 US election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets bowing to what he said was pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic. In a letter to the US House of Representatives, he said senior officials, including some from the White House, pressured Meta to remove content in 2021. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/e1db\/live\/659aed50-6453-11ef-91f3-273f9f80a920.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[75065,2120,79,1500,19202,7797,25506],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122278,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122276\/revisions\/122278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}