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Mark Zuckerberg 'comes clean' in damning letter about Facebook's election interference and pandemic censorship
AUGUST 27, 2024
Now, with the damage already done, Zuckerberg says he regrets helping the establishment wage information warfare on America.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee Monday that he now regrets the major role his company played not only in helping the Biden-Harris administration censor Americans' protected speech, but in suppressing critical information ahead of the 2020 election.
While unwilling to acknowledge its impact on recent American elections, Zuckerberg also indicated he will be terminating his "Zuck Bucks" scheme — ostensibly to alleviate some lawmakers' concerns about deep-pocketed partisans' election interference.
Although it's unclear whether Zuckerberg's admissions will be of any real-world consequence — impacting, for instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s censorship lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration — the committee nevertheless characterized his letter as a "big win for free speech."
Suppressing dissenting voices
Zuckerberg said in his damning letter addressed to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden-Harris 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."
The committee has obtained ample evidence in recent months and years detailing the extent of Facebook's work with the Biden-Harris administration to silence criticism of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, lockdown measures, and masking, along with other medically accurate information that undermined the Biden White House's preferred pandemic narrative, which it knew early on to be inaccurate.
'We own our decisions.'
For instance, an April 2021 email circulated by a Facebook employee, ostensibly on behalf of Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, noted that the Biden White House took issue with a "vaccine discouraging humorous meme," which it told the social media company to delete.
Blaze News previously reported that the verboten meme in question used the "Pointing Rick Dalton" template, borrowing a still from the 2019 film "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character points out something on television.
This meme, which the Biden White House wanted erased from the platform, was captioned, "10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear .... 'Did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled ...'" and was apparently shared over 385,000 times.
[Besides memes and medical facts, Facebook also dutifully censored content about the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, which is now the most credible account.
In his Monday letter, Zuckerberg admitted that despite knowing the "government pressure was wrong" and that his company could have told the Biden-Harris administration to pound sand, the company decided anyway to oblige the state, take content down, and censor users.
"Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of pressure," said Zuckerberg.
While Facebook was more than willing to comply with the Democratic administration's demands, Zuckerberg — possibly cognizant that he may soon be dealing with a Republican administration — indicated that the company is "ready to push back if something like this happens again."
Election interference
Zuckerberg also acknowledged in his letter Facebook's suppression of an accurate report in the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton ahead of the 2020 election.
"The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," wrote the Facebook CEO. "That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply."
"It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," added Zuckerberg.
Among the concerns raised in the New York Post's suppressed report was that a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter Biden for introducing him to Joe Biden about a year before Biden allegedly extorted the Eastern European country as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.
The report also hinted that Joe Biden, through his son and his own actions, may have been a compromised candidate and, at the very least, untruthful.[/b]
'Your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House.'
While Facebook worked to suppress the report, elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump — including active elements of the security state — swooped in to shield Biden in the final weeks before the election, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy.
Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden" but, more specifically, to help "him to win the election."
Zuckerberg assured Jordan in his letter that Facebook, having helped deliver to Biden a firm grasp on the 2020 election-time narrative and possibly the White House, has since changed its policies and process "to make sure this doesn't happen again," noting that content is no longer temporarily demoted while so-called fact-checkers decide whether it's fit for public consumption.
The Facebook CEO also addressed the contributions he made during the last presidential election to "support electoral infrastructure."
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped over $400 million into grants allegedly aimed at helping with election administration and voter accommodation. Critics have suggested that "Zuck Bucks" was alternatively a partisan scheme aimed at turning out more Democratic votes.
"They were designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities," wrote Zuckerberg. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a arole. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle."
"Zuck Bucks" may not be necessary in this election cycle, given that the federal government is actively working on fulfilling Biden's Executive Order 14019, which may prove far more effective at mobilizing Democratic voters.
The response
While the committee called the letter a "big win for free speech," Blaze News columnist Auron MacIntyre noted, "No, a win occurs when your enemies pay a price. Is someone going to jail? Is someone getting impeached? Is anyone even getting fined? No, you just got a confession that your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House."
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) similarly suggested that the letter was too little, too late, writing, "Facebook may have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. Four years later, we get a letter saying 'sorry.'"
"Mark Zuckerberg comes clean and finally admits what everyone already knows he and META did to influence the 2020 election," wrote Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.)
Elon Musk responded to the letter, noting, "Sounds like a First Amendment violation."
Podcaster Patrick Bet-David speculated that there were three possible reasons Zuckerberg would have made these admissions: "1. He's being honorable[;] 2. He's done with the Dem party[; and/or] 3. He's getting ahead of a whistleblower."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-comes-clean-in-damning-letter-about-facebooks-election-interference-and-pandemic-censorship?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240827Treniding%20-%20Morning&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News&tpcc=email-breaking
AUGUST 27, 2024
Now, with the damage already done, Zuckerberg says he regrets helping the establishment wage information warfare on America.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee Monday that he now regrets the major role his company played not only in helping the Biden-Harris administration censor Americans' protected speech, but in suppressing critical information ahead of the 2020 election.
While unwilling to acknowledge its impact on recent American elections, Zuckerberg also indicated he will be terminating his "Zuck Bucks" scheme — ostensibly to alleviate some lawmakers' concerns about deep-pocketed partisans' election interference.
Although it's unclear whether Zuckerberg's admissions will be of any real-world consequence — impacting, for instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s censorship lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration — the committee nevertheless characterized his letter as a "big win for free speech."
Suppressing dissenting voices
Zuckerberg said in his damning letter addressed to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden-Harris 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."
The committee has obtained ample evidence in recent months and years detailing the extent of Facebook's work with the Biden-Harris administration to silence criticism of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, lockdown measures, and masking, along with other medically accurate information that undermined the Biden White House's preferred pandemic narrative, which it knew early on to be inaccurate.
'We own our decisions.'
For instance, an April 2021 email circulated by a Facebook employee, ostensibly on behalf of Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, noted that the Biden White House took issue with a "vaccine discouraging humorous meme," which it told the social media company to delete.
Blaze News previously reported that the verboten meme in question used the "Pointing Rick Dalton" template, borrowing a still from the 2019 film "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character points out something on television.
This meme, which the Biden White House wanted erased from the platform, was captioned, "10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear .... 'Did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled ...'" and was apparently shared over 385,000 times.
[Besides memes and medical facts, Facebook also dutifully censored content about the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, which is now the most credible account.
In his Monday letter, Zuckerberg admitted that despite knowing the "government pressure was wrong" and that his company could have told the Biden-Harris administration to pound sand, the company decided anyway to oblige the state, take content down, and censor users.
"Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of pressure," said Zuckerberg.
While Facebook was more than willing to comply with the Democratic administration's demands, Zuckerberg — possibly cognizant that he may soon be dealing with a Republican administration — indicated that the company is "ready to push back if something like this happens again."
Election interference
Zuckerberg also acknowledged in his letter Facebook's suppression of an accurate report in the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton ahead of the 2020 election.
"The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," wrote the Facebook CEO. "That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply."
"It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," added Zuckerberg.
Among the concerns raised in the New York Post's suppressed report was that a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter Biden for introducing him to Joe Biden about a year before Biden allegedly extorted the Eastern European country as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.
The report also hinted that Joe Biden, through his son and his own actions, may have been a compromised candidate and, at the very least, untruthful.[/b]
'Your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House.'
While Facebook worked to suppress the report, elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump — including active elements of the security state — swooped in to shield Biden in the final weeks before the election, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy.
Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden" but, more specifically, to help "him to win the election."
Zuckerberg assured Jordan in his letter that Facebook, having helped deliver to Biden a firm grasp on the 2020 election-time narrative and possibly the White House, has since changed its policies and process "to make sure this doesn't happen again," noting that content is no longer temporarily demoted while so-called fact-checkers decide whether it's fit for public consumption.
The Facebook CEO also addressed the contributions he made during the last presidential election to "support electoral infrastructure."
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped over $400 million into grants allegedly aimed at helping with election administration and voter accommodation. Critics have suggested that "Zuck Bucks" was alternatively a partisan scheme aimed at turning out more Democratic votes.
"They were designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities," wrote Zuckerberg. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a arole. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle."
"Zuck Bucks" may not be necessary in this election cycle, given that the federal government is actively working on fulfilling Biden's Executive Order 14019, which may prove far more effective at mobilizing Democratic voters.
The response
While the committee called the letter a "big win for free speech," Blaze News columnist Auron MacIntyre noted, "No, a win occurs when your enemies pay a price. Is someone going to jail? Is someone getting impeached? Is anyone even getting fined? No, you just got a confession that your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House."
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) similarly suggested that the letter was too little, too late, writing, "Facebook may have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. Four years later, we get a letter saying 'sorry.'"
"Mark Zuckerberg comes clean and finally admits what everyone already knows he and META did to influence the 2020 election," wrote Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.)
Elon Musk responded to the letter, noting, "Sounds like a First Amendment violation."
Podcaster Patrick Bet-David speculated that there were three possible reasons Zuckerberg would have made these admissions: "1. He's being honorable[;] 2. He's done with the Dem party[; and/or] 3. He's getting ahead of a whistleblower."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-comes-clean-in-damning-letter-about-facebooks-election-interference-and-pandemic-censorship?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240827Treniding%20-%20Morning&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News&tpcc=email-breaking
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