- Mark Zuckerberg mentioned his aim is to be politically impartial and keep away from showing in any other case.
- In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, he mentioned he will not donate to assist election infrastructure in 2024.
Unlike a few of his tech founder friends, Mark Zuckerberg says he is not thinking about getting concerned with politics in 2024.
In a letter despatched Monday to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and has been a vocal critic of Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO mentioned his aim was to stay “impartial.”
“My aim is to be impartial and never play a task a method or one other — or to even seem like enjoying a task,” Zuckerberg wrote within the letter, which was obtained by Business Insider and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg mentioned that, in contrast to the final presidential election, he doesn’t plan to donate to assist election infrastructure in 2024. In 2020, he and his spouse donated $400 million to nonpartisan organizations serving to run elections in the course of the pandemic. Republicans branded them “Zuckerbucks” and claimed that they benefited Democrats within the election.
“They had been designed to be non-partisan — unfold throughout city, rural, and suburban communities. Still, regardless of the analyses I’ve seen displaying in any other case, I do know that some individuals imagine this work benefited one celebration over the opposite,” he wrote.
Though the donations have lengthy been controversial, a examine printed within the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May discovered personal donations, like Zuckerberg’s, didn’t benefit Democrats.
In the letter, Zuckerberg additionally addressed Meta’s content material moderation, a difficulty Jordan and different Republicans have been extremely crucial of, accusing the social media platform of censoring conservative viewpoints.
Zuckerberg mentioned in 2021 the Biden administration repeatedly pressured Meta to take away content material associated to COVID-19 and “expressed lots of frustration” when the corporate didn’t agree.
Internal Meta emails obtained by the Journal final yr beforehand confirmed the corporate had eliminated content material associated to COVID-19 after stress from the White House.
“Ultimately, it was our choice whether or not or to not take content material down, and we personal our choices, together with COVID-19-related modifications we made to our enforcement within the wake of this stress,” Zuckerberg wrote, including, “I imagine the federal government stress was incorrect, and I remorse that we weren’t extra outspoken about it.”
The White House didn’t reply to a request for remark from Business Insider.
In 2023, Jordan threatened to carry Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for not offering paperwork associated to censorship of conservative viewpoints.
Zuckerberg additionally acknowledged that in 2020, Meta suppressed a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer whereas ready for fact-checking to analyze, including, “looking back, we should not have demoted the story.”
He mentioned the corporate modified its processes to stop this from taking place once more, similar to not demoting tales whereas ready for a fact-check.
Zuckerberg has beforehand mentioned Meta was incorrect to suppress the laptop computer story.
Meta declined to remark when reached by BI.
