Mark Zuckerberg raised eyebrows yesterday when he admitted his Meta Corporation allowed censorship requests from the current Biden Administration. This included the COVID-19 pandemic and others related to Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal.
Image: DIW-Aigen
The Meta CEO did express regret on the situation but at the same time, raised questions through a new letter published and then directed to Rep Jim Jordan. This is where Zuckerberg says the company mishandled the situation when it was asked to suppress content related to the themes mentioned above.
Now the question that remains is if the incidents were government overreach or not. When we dig down deeper, we feel the answer is yes as they did go against the app’s own policy for freedom of speech.
The letter spoke about the year 2021 when officials from the government pressured Meta’s teams to censor the content of the pandemic, despite them disagreeing with the calls. Yes, Meta was in charge of making the final call but it tried to justify the act by blaming it on pressure.
As per Zuckerberg, pressurizing team members was wrong and he does regret how his company stayed silent at the time. The goal as per the government officials was to try and get the nation back on track by removing any content that instilled fear like vaccines.
The Meta CEO continued in the letter more about how so many of the choices that they made at the time, they would not make today. To be pressured into doing something wrong is not in the firms’ policies and they do regret it.
During that period, health officials warned the world that if they didn’t get the vaccine, they would die. The government agreed so any posts linked to anti-vaccines were eliminated. Meta says calls were made depending on how swiftly the situation in the pandemic was changing.
Now the question remains, is that violating free speech? As per logic and common sense, yes. The app was being suppressed from putting out all information. The same was the case with the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
It’s certainly a very controversial case in modern times. Forcing social media platforms to censor the story to prevent it from reaching the masses and impacting the President’s campaign was again wrong.
As per Meta’s statement on this front, they blamed it on an FBI report that stated how disinformation campaigns by Russians had begun and the Biden family was targeted. They regret demoting the story and should have waited for more details, Zuckerberg continued.
The fact that a story even existed about the president’s son taking his laptop filled with secret and private data to a repair shop in Delaware sounded ridiculous to many. But that was true as he wished to recover the data lost but failed to go back and ask for what he wanted. On that note, the device was given to the authorities and plenty of incriminating evidence was seen on the hard drive.
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