Justice Department to drop censorship efforts against social media
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In the wake of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s explosive admission regarding censorship from the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice will no longer attempt to block content on social media platforms pertaining to foreign threats to national security or elections, Bloomberg reported.
DOJ and FBI officials will now leave it up to social media platforms to decide whether to post shared information, remove content or block users, and will not retaliate against companies like Meta (NASDAQ:META), X, or YouTube (GOOG) for their decision to take action or not, according to a DOJ report made public in July.
“A primary goal of foreign actors is to sow discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values – including through covertly influencing and manipulating our elections through the misuse of online social media platforms,” the report said.
The government’s new social media guidelines involve sharing real-time intelligence about particular social media accounts or activity tied to foreign threats, and in-person voluntary meetings with social media companies to answer questions and to share information with DOJ officials at their discretion.
Last month, in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mark Zuckerberg said “senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, and expressed a lot of frustration when we didn’t agree.” Zuckerberg went on to say he believed government pressure to censor was wrong, “and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”
Zuckerberg also confirmed that Meta (META) hid content related to corruption allegations against President Biden’s son Hunter and Ukrainian firm Burisma leading up to the 2020 elections.
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg said.
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