In a stunning admission, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that his social media platform only censored the New York Post’s bombshell story about Hunter Biden’s laptop after the FBI came to them and advised them to do so.
As reported by the Daily Caller, Zuckerberg made the claim during an interview with Joe Rogan on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” on Thursday. Rogan had asked Zuckerberg about how his platform would handle censorship going forward, after multiple Big Tech platforms were widely criticized for deliberately suppressing the story, which was later confirmed to be true.
“The FBI basically came to us and some folks on our team and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election and we have noticed that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that, so be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg said. While adding that he couldn’t remember whether or not the agents specifically mentioned the laptop story, he said that once the story broke, it appeared to fit “the pattern” of so-called Russian disinformation.
Shortly after the story broke in October of 2020, Facebook began actively hindering the ability of any posts featuring the original URL to be seen by a wider audience, reducing its distribution capabilities while still allowing it to be posted and shared.
“It basically, the ranking in news feed was a little bit less. Fewer people saw it than would’ve otherwise,” Zuckerberg explained. In response, Rogan asked “by what percentage” did fewer people see it, to which Zuckerberg said that he didn’t have an exact number, but that it nonetheless would have been a “meaningful” percentage.
Zuckerberg further defended his company’s conduct by pointing out that at least Facebook wasn’t “as black and white about it as Twitter.” Almost immediately after the story was published, Twitter took the unprecedented step of outright banning any posts featuring the story: Any users who attempted to share the URL or send it in a private message would not be allowed to post until they removed the link. Twitter also temporarily suspended the official, verified account of the New York Post.
The story, which was later verified by mainstream media outlets, focused on the recovery of a laptop from a Delaware repair shop that had previously belonged to Hunter Biden. The laptop contained a massive amount of scandalous content featuring Hunter, including his frequent drug use and soliciting of prostitutes, as well as emails and other correspondences directly tying his father, Joe Biden, to his numerous shady overseas business deals.