Analysis: Mark Zuckerberg’s election gift to the Republicans

CNN
—

Mark Zuckerberg is handing Republicans political victories in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, settling the Republican Party’s longstanding grievances over his company’s policies.

In recent days, Meta’s CEO has made newsworthy public statements implicitly supporting right-wing “censorship” narratives and praising Donald Trump as “tough” — even as he claimed he wanted to appear “neutral” and nonpartisan.

On Monday, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the powerful House Judiciary Committee alleging that the Biden administration had “pressured” Meta to “censor” content during the pandemic.

“In 2021, senior officials in 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 significant frustration with our teams when we couldn’t agree,” Zuckerberg said.

The Meta boss added that the pressure he felt was “wrong” and that he “regretted” his company, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, not being more vocal.

Trump immediately used the letter as a weapon to once again spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Zuckerberg Admits White House Pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP STORY (and Much More!) IN OTHER WORDS, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIDDEN,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform Tuesday morning, after Zuckerberg’s letter became public.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee also welcomed Zuckerberg’s letter, posting a copy on social media on Monday and using it to attack President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic presidential nominee. The letter came amid a two-year investigation by House Republicans into the content moderation policies of major social media sites.

“Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things: 1. Biden-Harris Admin ‘pressured’ Facebook to censor Americans. 2. Facebook censored Americans. 3. Facebook strangled the Hunter Biden laptop story. Big win for free speech,” the committee wrote on X.

It’s not uncommon for social media companies to reevaluate their content moderation practices in the run-up to elections. Some experts now even argue that the companies went too far in some cases during the 2020 election.

But the decision to make such a revelation in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee is notable; the committee is chaired by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who has repeatedly spread the false rhetoric that the 2020 election was stolen and celebrated the dismantling of academic institutions dedicated to investigating election disinformation.

Zuckerberg decided to label the White House’s efforts to flag Covid disinformation as pressure and censorship, despite a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling this summer that the federal government had not gone too far in asking platforms to remove potential disinformation.

But Zuckerberg’s letter publicly played into the hands of Republicans, who have long falsely alleged that social media platforms colluded with liberal government officials to censor conservative voices. There have been instances, as Zuckerberg has acknowledged, in which platforms have removed or reduced the spread of dangerous pandemic misinformation or blatant election falsehoods, such as incorrect polling place locations, though that happened under the Trump and Biden administrations.

In recent years, the platforms of Zuckerberg and billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk have lifted many of the restrictions meant to stop the spread of viral disinformation, allowing Trump to return after being banned following the Jan. 6 attack.

Zuckerberg, who has previously donated more than $400 million to improve voting access in the US, also told Jordan he would no longer support the campaign after coming under fire from Republicans who have argued that the funds, derisively referred to as “Zuckerbucks,” helped Biden win key states that will determine the election.

“I know some people believe this work has benefited one party over the other,” he wrote. “My goal is to be neutral and not to play any role whatsoever — or even to appear to play a role. So I do not intend to make a similar contribution this cycle.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic depleted local resources during the 2020 election, private companies like Facebook stepped in to fill the coffers of election offices with these grants. With the explosion of mail-in voting during the pandemic, which requires more resources than in-person voting, counties across the country happily welcomed the money. But after Trump lost several key states and counties that had taken the money, Republicans used it as a scapegoat.

The decision to cut off funding was hailed as a victory by Republicans, and the Judiciary Committee also celebrated the move.

The Meta executive went a step further, telling the committee that the company’s decision to temporarily restrict sharing of the infamous October 2020 New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop was a mistake — a decision he has previously regretted.

Zuckerberg said that “it was made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight we should not have underreported the story.”

But while the contents of the laptop reported by the Post turned out to be authentic, according to the Justice Department, the New York Post’s 2020 reporting spread a false narrative that was simultaneously being pushed by the Russian government. That false narrative alleged that Joe Biden had “pressured government officials in Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating” the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where his son served on the board.

Zuckerberg’s letter comes just weeks after he told Bloomberg that Trump’s response to an assassination attempt was “tough,” even after the former president threatened to send the Meta leader to jail if he was re-elected.

“When I saw Donald Trump stand up after he was shot in the face and raise his fist in the air with the American flag, it was one of the most courageous things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told Bloomberg.

Taken together, the comments show Zuckerberg offering Republicans an olive branch ahead of the election, as well as some political ammunition. In the Bloomberg interview, Zuckerberg said Meta had made changes to its platforms to reduce the amount of political content reaching users, though it remains unclear what falls under that definition.

“I think our services will play a lesser role in these elections than in the past,” he said.