Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, said senior Biden administration officials pressured Meta to censor coronavirus-related content during the pandemic and that he would oppose it if it happened again.
Zuckerberg, who owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, wrote to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that he regretted not speaking out about the crackdown sooner and some of the decisions he made to remove certain content.
“Senior Biden administration officials, including White House officials, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain coronavirus content, including humor and satire, in 2021, and complained profusely to our teams when we disagreed,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was shared on the Judiciary Committee’s Facebook page.
“The government pressure was wrong and I regret not speaking out more about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think that with our experience and new knowledge, we made decisions that we would not have made today.”
The White House and Meta have not yet responded to questions on the matter.
