Meta boss expresses regret over bowing to state censorship pressure

The letter, addressed to the Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, was published by the Republican wing of that committee on X. We’ve also copied it below.

Zuckerberg confirms that the Biden administration persistently insisted Meta censor on request during the Covid pandemic, with even satirical content catching the Eye of Sauron. Furthermore, in an understated way Zuck infers his company faced threats if it failed to do what the US government told it. Now, perhaps in anticipation of a Republican victory in the imminent US general election, Zuck is saying he reckons the government was wrong to apply that pressure and regrets caving in to it.

As if that wasn’t enough to put up with, Zuck also laments the tricky situation he was put in when the FBI effectively called for political censorship by insisting reporting derived from a laptop Biden’s son Hunter had abandoned was, you guessed it, Russian disinformation. This was in the build-up to the election that Biden narrowly won, an outcome that would have been in jeopardy if the electorate had been aware of the allegations made in the reporting.

Even while the disinformation claims were fresh, the decision by many major internet platforms to censor the story, even going so far as to ban its sharing via direct messaging, was highly contentious. The Meta position at the time was to demote (i.e. shadow-ban) the story while it was fact checked, a process that may well have dragged on past election day. Zuck now concedes that the disinformation claim was itself disinformation and that it was a mistake to ‘demote’ the story.

This letter is an affirmation and further legitimisation of the reporting on The Twitter Files. As our recent interview with European Digital Rights explores, the collaboration between the state and digital platforms is a growing menace. Zuck’s letter coincides with the arrest in France the founder and CEO of social media platform Telegram Pavel Durov for a bunch of allegations that mostly focus on the complicity of Telegram in a wide range of crimes.

It looks like Durov has yet to be formally charged with anything and Russia has accused the US of being behind the arrest. Meanwhile establishment voices, including some close to the US government, are apparently celebrating Durov’s arrest as a victory over the forces of disinformation. Telegram is headquartered in Dubai and thus outside the jurisdiction of the French or US governments.