Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret for Facebook’s throttling of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the days leading up to the 2020 election but conditioned that “the process was pretty reasonable.”
Looming over Facebook’s decision to limit the story’s spread was a warning the FBI gave the company about dumps of Russian propaganda on the eve of the election, Zuckerberg explained in an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan released Thursday.
NEW FBI WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIMS BUREAU LEADERSHIP SLOW-WALKED HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION
“The background here is the FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert … we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” Zuckerberg said.
The revelation about the FBI warning is not new. Shortly after a firestorm erupted over Big Tech’s censorship of the New York Post’s story on the laptop in October 2020, Zuckerberg said the FBI warned Facebook about “hack and leak” content that the Russians might dump misinformation to interfere with the election.
Rogan followed up by asking the Meta chief if he regretted the company’s actions.
“I mean, it sucks. Yeah,” Zuckerberg said. “It turned out after the fact — the fact-checkers looked into it, and no one was able to say it was false. Right. So basically, it had this period where it was getting less distribution.”
“I think the process was pretty reasonable. You know, we still let people share it,” he added.
Zuckerberg also juxtaposed Facebook’s handling of Hunter Biden laptop reporting with its rival Twitter, which blocked users from sharing the New York Post altogether and even briefly froze the news outlet’s Twitter account before relenting.
“Our protocol is different from Twitter’s. What Twitter did is, they said, ‘You can’t share this at all.’ We didn’t do that,” he said. “If something is reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we use third-party fact-checking because we don’t want to be deciding what’s true and false.”
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has voiced regret for his company’s decision to censor the laptop story, conceding it was a “total mistake.”
Throughout the exchange, Zuckerberg explained how he struggles with the content moderation aspect of Facebook’s mandate. He argued that he views the dilemma between eliminating harmful information and allowing free speech to be “all trade-offs all the way down.”
Zuckerberg said Facebook tries to emulate the United States’s separation of powers with its content oversight board to ensure no one person had too much censorship power and stressed the importance of having strong processes to navigate such a dicey issue.
In response to public reaction to the exchange on Rogan’s podcast, Meta issued a tweet stressing that the company had divulged the FBI warning back in 2020.
“None of this is new. Mark testified before the Senate nearly two years ago that in the lead up to the 2020 election, the FBI warned about the threat of foreign hack and leak operations,” the company tweeted. “Consistent with our policy, after 7 days, we lifted the demotion because it wasn’t rated false by independent fact-checkers.”
Consistent with our policy, after 7 days, we lifted the demotion because it wasn’t rated false by independent fact-checkers. https://t.co/X4C1XP1hR1
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) August 26, 2022
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The FBI has recently come under renewed scrutiny for its handling of the laptop situation. A letter sent from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to the Justice Department earlier this week said a whistleblower claimed the FBI slow-walked its investigation into the laptop believed to have belonged to Hunter Biden.
The whistleblower alleged that workers at the bureau were instructed not to review the hard drive. FBI Director Christopher Wray testified last month he found it “deeply troubling” when he read the allegations.
