Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that senior Biden administration officials exerted significant pressure on his company to censor COVID-19 content during the pandemic. In a letter dated August 26, addressed to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg expressed regret for not speaking out against this pressure sooner and for some of the content removal decisions made by Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

“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,” Zuckerberg wrote. He added that the government’s demands were wrong, and he regretted not being more vocal at the time. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today,” he admitted.

Zuckerberg’s letter, shared publicly by the Committee on the Judiciary on its Facebook page, was addressed to Jim Jordan, the committee’s Republican chairman. The committee hailed the letter as a “big win for free speech,” highlighting Zuckerberg’s acknowledgment of Facebook’s role in censoring content during the pandemic.

Additionally, Zuckerberg stated that Meta would refrain from contributing to electoral infrastructure in this year’s presidential election, distancing the company from any potential influence on the upcoming November vote. During the 2020 election, Zuckerberg’s philanthropic initiative with his wife contributed $400 million to support election infrastructure, a move that was met with both praise and criticism.

(Adapted from CNN.com)