Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan about the FBI’s involvement.
QUICK FACTS:
- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that Facebook censored information about Hunter Biden’s laptop at the request of the FBI.
- Zuckerberg spoke to Rogan in an interview that aired Thursday on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and stood up for his company’s suppression of the New York Post‘s report about the now-first son.
- According to Zuckerberg, law enforcement officials warned that there could be “Russian propaganda” ahead of the 2020 residential election.
- The social media platform was allegedly warned about an upcoming “dump” of information and told to be “vigilant” about spreading the information.
ZUCKERBERG’S COMMENTS:
- “Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that 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 of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” Zuckerberg told host Joe Rogan.
- Zuckerberg was insistent that Facebook users were “still allowed to share” the Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop but said that their “third-party fact-checking program” was checking the possibility of whether it was misinformation. However, he did acknowledge that the “ranking in [the] news feed was a little bit less” and that “fewer people saw it than would’ve otherwise.”
- When asked to expand on what percentage the reach was decreased by, Zuckerberg said, “I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s- it’s meaningful,” Zuckerberg responded. “But we weren’t sort of as black and white about it as Twitter. We just kind of thought hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement- they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I want to take that seriously.”
BACKGROUND:
- Whistleblowers in the FBI have asserted that the law enforcement agency “slow-walked” the investigation until after the 2020 presidential election.
- Officials allegedly told employees, “You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,” according to the whistleblower’s report.
