Zuckerberg regrets "caving" to pressure from the Biden administration during COVID-19 and censoring Hunter's laptop story

In a letter sent to Republican Representative Jim Jordan, current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recognizes that he deleted Hunter Biden's laptop story on the eve of the 2020 presidential election and that he "caved" to pressure from Joe Biden's administration to censor COVID-19 related information in 2021.

As part of the Congressional investigation into the regulation of social media platforms and his involvement in censorship episodes, Zuckerberg sent Jordan the important two-page letter with his testimony.

First, the Meta CEO explains that, in 2021, "senior Biden Administration officials, including from the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed frustration with our team when we disagreed."

"Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to remove the content, and we own our decisions, including the COVID-19-related changes we made to our app as a result of this pressure," Zuckerberg said.

Meta's owner acknowledges that the pressure from the Biden administration was wrong, and he "regrets not being more vocal about it."

"I think we made decisions that, with the benefit of new information, we would not have made today," he adds.

For Zuckerberg, it was a mistake to have submitted the content standards to the pressures of the Administration, so he assures it will not happen again.

Likewise, the CEO of Meta - the company that hosts Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp - said that on the eve of the 2020 elections, the FBI warned him about a "potential Russian disinformation operation on the Biden family and Burisma [the company that Hunter would have sought to benefit from his father's influence]."

"That fall, when we saw the New York Post report on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden and his family, we sent the story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily downgraded it while we waited for a response," Zuckerberg writes.

Then, he says, it has since become clear that the story was never Russian disinformation, so "in retrospect, we should not have downgraded that story."

In the wake of that episode, Zuckerberg says that, as part of company policy, he no longer "downgrades" reports in the U.S. while awaiting review of fact-checkers.

Jim Jordan has been leading the congressional investigation into tech companies and their responsibility for censoring conservative speech on the internet for months. As part of the investigation, Zuckerberg has cooperated with Congress with thousands of documents and willingness to interview members of his team.

Part of the investigation was intended to prove that there has been collusion between big tech and Joe Biden's administration and the Democratic Party. Finally, Zuckerberg's confession letter signifies a big win for Republican efforts.

Regarding the letter, Elon Musk commented on his X account that, by confessing to suppressing free speech, Mark Zuckerberg would have "violated the First Amendment" of the United States.