Top tech executive blames censorship on ‘establishment’: ‘Really tough’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week blamed the company’s notorious censorship practices on the “establishment” and lamented that censorship “undermines trust”.

In communications produced last year, Facebook executives shared the steps they took to make unapproved speech about COVID-19 “harder to find on our platform.” Any content about COVID-19 that fact-checkers declare is “partly false” and “missing context," Facebook treats as completely false. The company also divulged that any user or “entity” simply connected to an “entity” de-platformed for wrong speech is deemed “non-recommendable".    

The emails show that Facebook often colluded with the federal government to overrule scientists and medical experts on COVID-19, like when the company “fact-checked” the British Medical Journal. But more than that, the social media giant actively approached the Biden administration several times for help in suppressing information.

In 2021, for example, Facebook executives asked CDC officials for help in debunking claims about the vaccine, including criticism of injecting infants with the COVID-19 injections. The CDC was happy to oblige, deeming nearly every claim false, often without explanation except “it is reasonable to assume these statements may lead to vaccine refusal.” 

“Thank you so much again, I can’t reiterate enough how helpful this is for us to remove these misinfo claims ASAP!” a Facebook executive gushed. 

Facebook also asked the White House how to defend vaccines after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be deadly. The White House responded that Facebook should change its algorithm to block any criticism of the injections.

Nearly all COVID-19 “misinformation” Facebook suppressed — such as the inefficacy of masks, the danger and inefficacy of mRNA vaccines, the origin of COVID-19, the inaccuracy of infection and mortality data, the danger and inefficacy of lockdowns — have since turned out to be true.

Nevertheless, Facebook zealously protected even allusions to the vaccine’s dangerous side effects, which included banning the hashtag #DiedSuddenly though it made no mention of the shots.

On Wednesday, Zuckerberg blamed the suppression on the “establishment”.

"Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn’t been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions, and, unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts,” Zuckerberg said on the Lex Fridman podcast.

The Facebook founder said he was "asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true."

“And that stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust,” he added.

But Facebook’s censorship is not limited to COVID-19. In an interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan last year, Zuckerberg blamed the FBI for Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post exposé on the Biden family’s corruption just before the 2020 presidential election. While it appears the FBI warned the social media company about “Russian propaganda,” it was Facebook that ultimately decided to block the story.

In April, Facebook teamed up with Norway to suppress a story from Pulitzer Prize–winning independent journalist Seymour Hersh which detailed a joint operation between the US and Norway to sabotage Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline. 

In addition to de-platforming President Donald Trump in January 2021, Facebook has since banned any suggestion of electoral fraud. In August 2022, Meta crafted a new “misinformation” policy which prohibited users from expressing concern about the integrity of the 2022 midterm elections. 

Zuckerberg was found to have tampered in the 2020 US presidential election by violating bribery laws, spending $419 million to influence the vote.