Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said senior officials in the Biden administration had pressured his social media company to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic, adding that he would push back if this were to happen again.
In a letter dated August 26, Zuckerberg told the US House of Representatives judiciary committee that he regretted not speaking up earlier about this pressure and some decisions the owners of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp had made regarding removing certain content.
"In 2021, 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," Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was posted by the Committee on the Judiciary on its Facebook page.
"I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it," he wrote. "I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today."