(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A White House spokesperson said the Biden–Harris administration encouraged Facebook to be responsible, even though Mark Zuckerberg was “pressured” to “censor” specific content.
The House Judiciary Committee recently published a letter from Zuckerberg about repeated demands from the Biden-Harris administration to censor any content related to coronavirus and vaccines.
In 2021, Zuckerberg wrote that “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.”
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
Blaze Media reported that the White House declined to acknowledge its fault and that Zuckerberg had used terms regarding censorship and pressure.
“When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” a White House spokesperson said.
The White House official then said that Big Tech platforms, like Facebook, are responsible for the censorship because they can make “independent” choices about the content posted on their apps.
“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,” the official said in the statement.
Blaze Media wrote that the White House also provided the same statement to media members.
The administration’s denial of censorship contradicts many social media companies, such as Twitter, which released Twitter Files, working with the government to censor the content on their platforms. Twitter Files exposed the federal government’s interest in suppressing different stories, including the ones about the Hunter Biden laptop.
Zuckerberg complained about the same thing in his letter to Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
According to him, the FBI warned his company about “potential Russian disinformation” regarding the Biden family and Ukrainian energy company Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Zuckerberg admitted that his team “temporarily demoted” stories posted on Facebook and Instagram, adding that it had since been made clear that “the reporting was not Russian disinformation.”