This week Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. For months, the GOP-led committee has been on a crusade to prove that Meta, via its once-eponymous Facebook app, engaged in political sabotage by taking down right-wing content. Its investigation has involved thousands of documents, and the committee interviewed multiple employees, which failed to locate a smoking gun. Now, under the guise of offering his take on the subject, Zuckerberg’s letter is a mea culpa where he seems to indicate that there was something to the GOP conspiracy theory.
Specifically, he said that in 2021 the Biden administration asked Meta “to censor some Covid-related content.” Meta did take the posts down, and Zuckerberg now regrets the decision. He also conceded that it was wrong to take down some content regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the company did after the FBI warned that the reports might be Russian disinformation.
What stood out to me, besides the letter’s simpering tone, was how Zuckerberg used the word “censor.” For years the right has been using that word to describe what it regards as Facebook’s systematic suppression of conservative posts. Some state attorneys general have even used that 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 contended that the First Amendment is about government suppression, and by definition its content decisions could not be characterized as such. Indeed, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuits and blocked the laws.
Now, by using that term to describe the removal of the Covid material, Zuckerberg seems to be backing down. After years of insisting that, right or wrong, a social media company’s content decisions did not deprive people of First Amendment rights—and in fact said that by making such decisions, the company was invoking its free speech rights—Zuckerberg is now handing its conservative critics just what they wanted.
I asked Meta spokesperson Andy Stone if the company now agrees with the GOP that some of its decisions to take down content can be referred to as “censoring.” Stone said that Zuckerberg was referring to the government when he used that term. But he also pointed me to Zuckerberg’s affirmation that the ultimate decision to remove the posts was Meta’s own. (Responding to the Zuckerberg letter, the White House said, “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” and left the final decision to Facebook.)
Meta can’t have it both ways, The letter is clear—Zuckerberg said the government pressured Meta to “censor” some Covid content. Meta took that material down. Ergo, Meta now characterizes some of its own actions as censorship. Seizing on this, the GOP members of the Judiciary Committee quickly tweeted that Zuckerberg has now outright admitted “Facebook censored Americans.”
Stone did say that Meta still does not consider itself a censor. So is Meta disputing that GOP tweet? Stone wouldn’t comment on it. It seems that Meta will offer no pushback while GOP legislators and right-wing commentators crow that Facebook now concedes that it blatantly censored conservatives as a matter of policy.
Meta’s CEO presented Jordan and the GOP with another gift in his letter, involving his private philanthropy. During the 2020 election, Zuckerberg helped fund nonpartisan initiatives to protect people’s right to vote. Republicans criticized Zuckerberg’s effort as aiding the Democrats. Zuckerberg still insists he wasn’t advocating that people vote a certain way, just ensuring they were free to cast ballots. But, he wrote Jordan, he recognized that some people didn’t believe him. So, apparently to indulge those ill-informed or ill-intentioned critics, he now vows not to fund bipartisan voting efforts during this election cycle. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or even appear to play a role,” he wrote.
