Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter to the US House Judiciary Committee yesterday that he was pressured by the government to make Facebook censor Covid-related content in 2021.
In itself, Zuckerberg said that the high Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Metathe parent company of Facebook and Instagram. He added: “I think the government pressure was misplaced and I regret that we were not more forthright.”
The letter from the CEO of Meta was published in X by the US House of Representatives judiciary panel, curiously on the same day that Twitter owner, Elon Musk sued Zuckerberg having yielded to pressure to impose censorship.
“Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but there is no arrest for Zuck as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data.”
Elon Musk, owner of the social network X.
All this happens at the moment when The debate on the protection of freedom of expression has been reignited and the digital rights of social media users, now that Telegram founder Pavel Durov has been under arrest in France since last Saturday, as was reported reported by CriptoNoticias.
Telegram, which is end-to-end encrypted, has pledged to never reveal its users’ information, thereby establishing itself as an alternative to American messaging platforms, which have been criticized for commercially exploiting users’ personal data.
Now the Paris Court of Justice accuses Durov of complicity in serious crimes and He is charged with 12 counts for which he faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Musk yesterday claimed that Zuckerberg had given in to government pressure. Source: X/elonmusk.
Social media users call for protection of freedom of expression
Meanwhile, millions of people are defending the freedom of expression offered by Telegram and criticising attempts at censorship that they consider unfair and disproportionate. The situation raises a complex debate about the responsibility of platforms in moderating content and protecting users’ rights.
In this regard, in his letter to the House Judiciary Committee Zuckerberg said: “I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in any direction, and we are ready to fight back if something like this happens again.”
House Judiciary Committee Republicans touted the letter as a “major victory for free speech,” writing in X: “Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
This last point is related to a New York Post article that Meta decided to remove from its platform. It dealt with the controversial content from the laptop of US President Hunter Biden’s son.
Users continue to have questions about how Facebook messages are handled. Source: X/Cal1995I.
In his confessions, Zuckerberg admits that the decision to censor the article was not only a mistake, but also a failure in Meta’s commitment to freedom of expression.
According to Zuckerberg, the company’s new policy seeks not only to correct this mistake, but also to restore the trust of its users, ensuring that relevant content is not dismissed due to unfounded fears of misinformation.
However, this is not the first time that Meta’s CEO has made harsh confessions about the handling of information and data on the social media platforms managed by his company. Zuckerberg admitted his responsibility in 2018 when the scandal of Cambridge Analytica. It was a data leak, where sand used information from 50 million users to influence voting intentions in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
At the time, Zuckerberg also mentioned that some measures had been put in place to prevent similar incidents. That was before recalling that in 2013, researcher Aleksander Kogan developed a personality quiz that was installed by 300,000 people, who shared their data and that of their friends. This access was facilitated by Facebook’s policies at the time, which allowed Kogan to collect millions of data points. However, a year later, the social network reportedly made significant changes to restrict that access.
Definitely, The way Meta handles sensitive information from now on will be watched closely watched by both critics and defenders alike in an increasingly polarized political climate.
Crypto Keynote USA
For the Latest Crypto News, Follow ©KeynoteUSA on Twitter Or Google News.