RIGHT SPEAK: Mark Zuckerberg Just Blew the Whistle on Biden's Contempt for Free Speech; What Mark Zuckerberg Really Said — and Didn't Say — in That Letter to Congress, and other C-Virus related stories

Mark Zuckerberg Just Blew the Whistle on Biden's Contempt for Free Speech | Opinion:

Apparently, Joe Biden can't take a joke. Oh, and he also has contempt for the principle of free expression online.

Both these revelations were just confirmed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who on Monday evening blew the whistle on the Biden administration's attempts to pressure his company to censor content relating to the COVID-19 pandemic—including "humor and satire." Zuckerberg confirmed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that they did make changes to their "enforcement" (read: censorship) in light of this pressure and that the White House expressed "a lot of frustration" with the company when their take-down demands weren't always met.

"I believe the government pressure was wrong," Zuckerberg wrote, "and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today."

"We're ready to push back if something like this happens again," the CEO concluded. And it very well might, because the Biden administration evidently does not regret taking this approach.

"When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this Administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety," the White House said in response to this story. "Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present."

(Translation: We still think the government knows best and should get to dictate to companies what ideas Americans can express on their platforms.)

Ultimately, Zuckerberg's revelations just confirm what we already knew from the Twitter Files and other extensive reporting: that the Biden administration has used the might of the federal government (which has extensive regulatory and financial power over Big Tech companies) to pressure social media platforms to take down the otherwise First-Amendment-protected speech of American citizens. --->READ MORE HERE

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What Mark Zuckerberg really said — and didn't say — in that letter to Congress:

Here's a head-scratcher: Why did Mark Zuckerberg just send Congress a letter admitting that Meta has screwed up in the past?

I have a hunch.

But before you can get into that, you have to look at what Zuckerberg actually said in his letter to Jim Jordan, the Republican lawmaker who has spent years trying to find evidence of an anti-conservative bias in Big Tech.

Very briefly:

Zuckerberg says that in 2021, the Biden White House "repeatedly pressured" Facebook to censor some posts about the COVID-19 pandemic — pressure Zuckerberg now says was wrong. He says Biden's White House wasn't ultimately responsible for any actions Facebook took, however, because "we own our decisions." But he has some regrets about some of them today.

Zuckerberg says that in 2020, Facebook "temporarily demoted" a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop. And that in retrospect, it shouldn't have.

Zuckerberg says that, unlike during the 2020 election, his Chan Zuckerberg charity won't spend money on helping people register to vote. He says he thought it was a decent thing to do four years ago, "to help people vote safely during a global pandemic."

In online conservative circles, starting with Jordan himself, Zuckerberg's letter/mea culpa is supposed to be a very big deal: a "Big win for free speech," as Jordan's judiciary committee tweeted.

But if you take a closer look at what Zuckerberg said, and didn't say, you may come to the conclusion I've reached: that Zuckerberg very carefully gave Jordan just enough to claim a political victory — but without getting Meta in any further trouble while it defends itself against a federal antitrust suit.

Let's dig in. The first item in the letter, about the Biden White House pressuring Facebook during the pandemic, is by far the most politically meaningful.

For years, conservatives like Jordan have argued that Big Tech companies like Facebook have an anti-Republican bias. And here, finally, you have a Big Tech CEO saying a Democratic administration did indeed try to influence what happened on the platform. And that Zuckerberg now regrets some of the calls his team made about COVID content during the election.

People who pay attention to Silicon Valley and its internal fights over moderation on platforms like Facebook will know that Zuckerberg's comments are pretty mild. It's well established that various government bodies — including the Trump White House — were talking to all the platforms about COVID posts, among other things. And that there's been an industrywide pendulum swing against some of the platform-moderation efforts that built up over the years. --->READ MORE HERE