This week, Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan. For months, the GOP-led committee has been on a crusade to prove that Meta, through its once-eponymous Facebook app, engaged in political sabotage by removing right-wing content. The investigation included thousands of documents and interviewed multiple employees, but found no smoking gun. Now, Zuckerberg’s letter, masquerading as his opinion on the subject, is a mea culpa that seems to indicate there was something to the GOP conspiracy theory.
He specifically said that in 2021, the Biden administration asked Meta “to censor some Covid-related content.” Meta did indeed remove the posts, and Zuckerberg now regrets that decision. He also admitted that it was wrong to remove some content about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the company did after the FBI warned that the reports could be Russian disinformation.
What struck me, besides the simpering tone of the letter, was Zuckerberg’s use of the word “censor.” For years, the right has used that word to describe what they see as Facebook’s systematic suppression of conservative content. Some state attorneys general have even used the trope to argue that the company’s content should be regulated, and Florida and Texas have passed laws to do just that. Facebook has always maintained that the First Amendment is about government oppression, and by definition its content decisions could not be characterized as such. The Supreme Court subsequently dismissed the lawsuits and blocked the laws.
Now, by using that term to describe the removal of the Covid material, Zuckerberg appears to be backtracking. After years of insisting that, rightly or wrongly, a social media company’s content decisions did not deprive people of their First Amendment rights, and essentially saying that by making such decisions, the company was to call upon her right to free speech — Zuckerberg is now giving her conservative critics exactly what they wanted.
I asked Meta spokesman Andy Stone whether the company now agrees with the GOP that some of its decisions to remove content could be called “censorship.” Stone said Zuckerberg was referring to the government when he used the term. But he also pointed me to Zuckerberg’s confirmation that the final decision to remove the posts was Meta’s own. (In response to Zuckerberg’s letter, the White House said, “Faced with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” leaving the final decision to Facebook.)
Meta can’t do two things at once. The letter is clear: Zuckerberg said the government pressured Meta to “censor” some Covid content. Meta removed that material. So Meta is now characterizing some of its own actions as censorship. The GOP members of the Judiciary Committee seized on this, quickly tweeting that Zuckerberg has now flatly admitted that “Facebook has censored Americans.”
Stone did say that Meta still doesn’t consider himself a censor. So is Meta disputing that GOP tweet? Stone declined to comment. It seems unlikely Meta will offer a response, as GOP lawmakers and right-wing commentators crowed that Facebook is now admitting it openly censored conservatives as a matter of policy.
The Meta CEO gave Jordan and the GOP another gift in his letter, regarding his private philanthropy. During the 2020 election, Zuckerberg helped fund nonpartisan efforts to protect people’s right to vote. Republicans criticized Zuckerberg’s efforts as helping Democrats. Zuckerberg maintains that he was not advocating for any particular way to vote, only that people should be free to cast their ballots. But, he wrote to Jordan, he acknowledged that some people didn’t believe him. So, apparently to appease those ill-informed or malicious critics, he is now vowing not to fund any bipartisan voting efforts this election cycle. “My goal is to be neutral and not to play a role in any way — or even appear to play a role,” he wrote.
