Mark Zuckerberg finally admitted on Thursday that Facebook mishandled when the company suppressed and banned The Post’s exclusive report on Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election.
Zuckerberg CEO of Meta explained that he regretted Facebook handling of the story during an appearance on “Joe Rogan Experience” . He also defended Facebooks actions as “pretty reasonable”
The Billionaire CEO continued explaining controversial media suppression after Rogan questioned him to explain his views on how big tech should handle content containing sensitive subjects.
“When something like that turns out to be real, is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story?” Rogan asked about The Post’s report on Hunter’s laptop.
“Yeah, it sucks,” Zuckerberg said. “It turned out after the fact, the fact-checkers looked into it, no one was able to say it was false … I think it sucks, though, in the same way that probably having to go through a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks.”
He said Meta chose to handle the story differently than Twitter and opted in to limiting the sharing of the story, but not halt entirely after the FBI warned of “Russian propaganda” prior to the election.
Zuckerberg was unable to give details on whether the FBI specifically told Meta to be on guard about the Hunter laptop story.
“No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern,” Zuckerberg said.
He also added, “The FBI basically came to us… [saying], ‘Hey, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on a notice that there is about to be some kind of a dump that is similar to that, so be just vigilant.’”
The big tech billionaire admitted that sharing of the story was meaningfully limited on Facebook after its initial publication.
“I think the right way is to establish principles for governance that try to be balanced and not having the decision-making too centralized,” Zuckerberg responded. “It’s hard for people to accept that some team at Meta or that I personally am making these decisions.”
