Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday that Facebook should never have censored the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg revealed the FBI had warned the social media platform "about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election."
In a Truth Social post, Former President Donald Trump noted: “IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED."
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"That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply," reads the letter. "It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story."
Zuckerberg also points out in the letter that "some people believe this work benefited one party over the other."
Mike Benz, the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, pointed out how Zuckerberg had waited to release the letter until after the Supreme Court's June ruling in Murthy v. Missouri in which the top court essentially paved the way for the feds to continue pressuring social media platforms to censor content, or as the Left calls it "disinformation."
Looking at this again now, I can’t help but ball my fists in a rage that Zuckerberg waited til after the SCOTUS ruling in Murthy to say this. SCOTUS focused skepticism on the causal relation between gov’t pressure & platform action. This letter likely would have swung the case. https://t.co/ktav7TbG5v
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 27, 2024
Zuckerberg also confirmed in the letter to Jordan that he won't be donating to support election infrastructure in 2024, unlike in 2020 when he and his wife contributed $400 million. Most of those 2020 funds, or “Zuckerbucks”, went to Democrat-dominated areas in key swing states.
“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter.
Meanwhile, David Plouffe, who managed President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and advised Zuckerberg on the “Zuckerbucks” effort in 2020, is now advising the Kamala Harris campaign.
A report in early August noted that Harris had brought several senior Obama veterans on board, including Plouffe. Many observers noted that Harris’s message placed an emphasis on “joy” as a way to explain her odd laugh, and as a central focus of the party at the Democratic National Convention last week after Plouffe joined the team.
Plouffe advised Zuckerberg’s nonprofit organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, when it gave “$350 million to the “Safe Elections” Project of the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and another $69.5 million to the Center for Election Innovation and Research.” That amount rivaled total federal government spending to make elections safer during the coronavirus pandemic. Analyses suggested funds were concentrated in Democratic counties in swing states.
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