Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook and Instagram were wrong to censor posts about Covid during the pandemic and that the company should have fought pressure from the Biden administration.
In a letter to a US committee investigating online content moderation, Mr Zuckerberg said senior White House officials “repeatedly pressured” the company after Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021.
He said that Facebook “made some choices” that it would not have made today.
In a letter to Jim Jordan, the Trump-supporting head of the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, Mr Zuckerberg wrote: “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, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.
“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.
“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.
“Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
During the pandemic, Facebook added misinformation alerts to users when they commented on or liked posts that were judged to contain false information about Covid.
It also deleted posts criticising the Covid vaccine, or suggesting that Covid was developed in a Chinese laboratory, a theory that has since become supported by some mainstream scientists and government agencies.
In the 2020 election campaign, Mr Biden had accused Facebook of “killing people” by not clamping down on Covid posts more enthusiastically. He later rowed back on the comments.
Mr Zuckerberg also said Facebook was wrong to suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden, Mr Biden’s son, which revealed that Hunter had offered business contacts access to his father when he was vice president.
He said the FBI had warned the company about a “potential Russian disinformation operation” about the Biden family. Facebook had demoted the story while it was reviewed by fact checkers, which Mr Zuckerberg said was a mistake.
The Hunter Biden laptop story, which was blocked by Twitter after it was published, was potentially damaging to Mr Biden’s election campaign. Blocking it has been seen by Republicans as proof of Silicon Valley’s Left-wing influence.
Elon Musk released a series of internal emails about the decision to block the story after buying Twitter.
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee called Mr Zuckerberg’s admissions a “big win for free speech”.
Meanwhile, the White House defended its actions.
It said: “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.”
