The FBI is defending itself from GOP fury after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed the bureau’s influence on Facebook’s decision to censor news regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election.
The bureau released a statement Friday arguing that it “routinely notifies US private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information” after Zuckerberg’s interview with Joe Rogan, which took place Thursday. In it, he expressed regret for Facebook’s throttling of the laptop story in the days leading up to the 2020 election but cautioned that “the process was pretty reasonable.” Looming over the company’s call to limit the story’s spread was a warning the FBI gave about dumps of Russian propaganda on the eve of the election.
FACING GOP ANGER, META SAYS ZUCKERBERG COMMENT ON FBI AND LAPTOP ISN’T NEW
The FBI added in its statement that the bureau has “provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.”
Zuckerberg said in his interview with Rogan, “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.'”
Rogan responded by asking the Facebook founder if he regretted the company’s actions, to which Zuckerberg said yes.
“I mean, it sucks. Yeah,” Zuckerberg told the podcast host. “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.
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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.
Still, the news sparked outrage among Republicans, with some lawmakers in the House saying they want Zuckerberg to come before Congress to explain himself.
