Mark Zuckerberg is quite the villain for Republicans, often blamed for “stealing” the 2020 election away from Donald Trump. But the Meta CEO has been bending over backward in recent months to prove he’s actually a politically neutral actor in the world of social media. And his latest demonstration of fealty to the Republican Party might be the most transparent yet, even if Trump said as recently as July that he wanted to put Zuck in prison.
Zuckerberg sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, on Monday that’s been spreading like wildfire on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Jordan is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and has been investigating so-called interference by the government to supposedly hurt Donald Trump.
The letter lays out what Zuck describes as attempts to “censor” speech by the U.S. government, a very interesting word to use, given the context.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote.
The Facebook co-founder acknowledges that while it was completely up to his company about whether to take down the content, which makes his use of the word “censor” intellectually dishonest. Governments don’t ask when they want to censor something. They use the many levers at their disposal to just make it happen, including the threat of state-sanctioned violence.
“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure,” Zuckerberg continued. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
Zuck said he would make different choices in the future and insisted the company was “ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
The White House responded in a statement to the Associated Press on Tuesday that it believed tech companies need to be acting responsibly when it comes to protecting the public.
“When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” the statement reads. “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.”
Zuckerberg also mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop story in his letter to Jim Jordan as something that he felt misled about when the FBI said it was Russian disinformation meant to influence the 2020 election. And while it’s true that it was certainly intended to influence the election, there has been nothing made public that would suggest it was fake.
“In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election,” Zuckerberg wrote. “That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply.”
It should be noted that plenty of reporters asked to see the laptop to corroborate its contents but the man who had possession of it, Trump stooge Rudy Giuliani, refused to show it to anyone but the New York Post.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg continued. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again -for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers.”
Obviously, most Americans don’t want the government censoring speech, and pressure to take down content will be seen by various groups differently. To take an example, most Americans would probably be appalled at someone expressing approval on social media for a terrorist act. But that would typically be considered protected speech under the First Amendment, as long as the speaker wasn’t trying to instigate a new act.
And this is where things get tricky. Because most Americans would also probably find it reasonable for the FBI to flag content like that for a social network, even if it’s technically legal. The same goes for other kinds of extremism and underhanded plots believed to be executed by geopolitical enemies of the U.S. in the New Cold War.
The last thing that Zuckerberg mentioned in his letter to Jordan was the money he donated to non-partisan politically focused groups in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Zuck had given money to groups that worked to expand voting rights access during the covid pandemic by doing things like setting up dropboxes for ballots. This was all completely normal stuff, but Trump supporters cried foul, of course.
“Apart from content moderation, I want to address the contributions I made during the last presidential cycle to support electoral infrastructure,” Zuckerberg wrote. “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. I made these contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.”
Zuck, who recently called Trump “badass” after the assassination attempt on the neo-fascist, insisted he was trying to be neutral and wouldn’t make any contributions like that in the future.
“They were designed to be non-partisan—spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities,” Zuck wrote. “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or to even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”
Changing Zuckerberg’s behavior because dipshit bad-faith actors say he’s “rigging” the election by expanding access to voting may be the biggest coup accomplished by Republicans in this whole mess.
The response from the MAGA crowd has been what you’d expect. They didn’t find Zuck’s response sympathetic but instead doubled down on how evil he must be since he’s clearly working for the Democrats.
“Mark Zuckerberg just ADMITTED to working with the Biden/Harris admin to CENSOR Facebook in 2021,” right-wing influencer Vince Dao wrote on X Monday.
The official account for the House Judiciary Committee also tweeted about the letter on Monday, insisting that Facebook “censored” Americans and “throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.” The letter was a “big win for free speech,” according to the tweet, though it’s not entirely clear what they mean by that.
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin “pressured” Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Trump, also predictably pushed out a news alert to users on Tuesday about Zuckerberg. In short, this letter was seen as a big win for Republicans. And while Zuck may think he’s making friends, there’s no guarantee any member of the far-right coalition will see him as an ally after this.
The Meta CEO really wants to be seen as a politically neutral actor who can be friends with Trump’s band of racists, fascists, and general malcontents. Only time will tell whether that strategy pays off for him in any way.
