Zuckerberg Capitulates to Conservatives Again Over COVID Misinformation, Hunter Biden Laptop

Faced with criticism from the right that removing false posts somehow “censors Americans,” Facebook Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg threw in the towel and said his social media companies will do less to address misleading posts.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg considers himself a sort of mixed martial arts cage fighter, but he’s often in trouble when conservatives argue with him about what they can and can’t post on his platforms.

His latest warning seems to come out of nowhere, though it is a communication to the House Judiciary Committee, which grilled him and other tech executives seven months ago about the dangers to children on their platforms.

This may seem unrelated, but CBS News reports that Zuckerberg sent a letter to the committee’s chairman, Jim Jordan (R-OH), saying his companies should not have censored false COVID-related Facebook posts and blaming the Biden administration for pressuring them to do so.

This all sounds reminiscent of what Zuckerberg did during the Trump administration, if you recall. In order to avoid unwanted Republican attention on his company, Zuckerberg went to the White House to meet with Trump in 2019. He even attended a private dinner with Peter Thiel and Trump, three years after he tried to deflect criticism from the left that Facebook was partly responsible for Trump’s election. At the time, Zuckerberg distanced himself from censorship cries and suggested that Facebook would accept political ads from all sides, even if they contained falsehoods, “because that’s democracy.”

And in June 2020, Zuckerberg faced a (virtual) walkout from Facebook employees over his lax handling of Trump’s inflammatory posts about the election and his lies about COVID.

The House Judiciary Committee posted Zuckerberg’s latest letter to (ahem) their Facebook page this week, declaring Zuck’s surrender another “great victory for free speech.”

“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 disagreed,” Zuckerberg wrote in his letter to the committee. While it was ultimately Meta’s decision whether to comply, Zuck now whines that “I regret we were not more vocal about this.”

Both sides of this discourse forget that thousands of Americans were dying every day, and that was perhaps more important than your crazy uncle’s right to post about ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or whatever other crazy nonsense he heard on Joe Rogan’s show.

The White House said in a statement to Politico on Monday that “when we were faced with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

Zuckerberg’s letter also admits to the whole Hunter Biden laptop controversy, after Facebook restricted the distribution of the original New York Post story reporting it. While it was the FBI that had flagged the story as a potential disinformation campaign, and in fairness, the fact that the laptop contained troves of nude photos forced many news organizations to drop the story.

“It has since become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect we should not have underreported the story,” Zuckerberg’s letter said.

And finally, the GOP appears to have blocked Zuck from making election-related contributions, like the $400 million he once donated to support electoral infrastructure in the 2020 election.

“I know some people believe this work has benefited one party over the other,” his letter reads. “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.”

It appears the mixed martial arts cage fighter has just been punched in the body and put in a chokehold again.

Related: Zuckerberg denies secret deal with Jared Kushner to never censor Trump’s posts (SFist)

Image: WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 31: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony from the heads of the largest tech companies about the dangers of child sexual exploitation on social media. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)