“That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust,” said Zuckerburg.
QUICK FACTS:
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg admitted on the Lex Fridman podcast that Facebook censored accurate COVID-19 information to keep in line with mainstream establishments.
- Zuckerburg noted that “misinformation” presented itself as a “tricky” problem “because there are things that are kind of obviously false, that are maybe factual, but may not be harmful.”
- The CEO pondered, “So it’s like, alright, are you going to censor someone for just being wrong, if there’s no kind of harm implication of what they’re doing?’”
- “Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier in the pandemic where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions,” said Zuckerburg.
- “Unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true,” the Meta CEO continued. “That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust.”
- Meta-owned social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp frequently labeled COVID-19 content as “misinformation” if it contrasted with mainstream thought.
- Big Tech companies like Facebook blacklisted those with opposing views on the subject, including Dr. Peter McCullough and those involved with America’s Frontline Doctors.
RESPONSES TO THE ADMISSION:
- Professor and Stanford School of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya tweeted that Zuckerberg had in fact “served as an enforcer for government propaganda during the pandemic. His regime of censorship on Facebook — in which falsehoods were allowed and truth censored — enabled school closures, vax mandates, toddler masking, and much else. Glad to see some humility here.”
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted that Zuckerburg and others were “complicit in a web of deception” during the pandemic.
- New York Times bestselling author Ryan Winfield similarly tweeted, “But it’s not tough at all. Don’t censor.”
BACKGROUND:
- In November 2022, it was learned that Twitter and Facebook executives held regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over censorship practices.
- The leaked information indicated that DHS planned to target misinformation around “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
- In one leaked message, an executive from Microsoft texted, “Platforms have got to get more comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain.”
