August 28, 2024 – Thoughts on the Zuckerberg letter to House Judiciary Committee

In Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations by Katie Weddington

(Credit: Fiora Carr/Time)

(…) Professor Philip Hamburger takes up one facet of the letter in the Wall Street Journal column “The ‘Tell’ in Zuckerberg’s Letter to Congress” (behind the Journal’s paywall). Subhead: “He neither admits nor denies that Meta bowed to government censorship pressure.” Professor Hamburger writes: “The aim, presumably, is to avoid having Meta treated as a state actor for purposes of the First Amendment and then being held liable for damages.” As I say, close reading is required.

Matt Taibbi commends Zuckerberg’s letter in his Racket News subscribers-only post “Zuckerberg defies the Borg.” Subhead: “As governments everywhere tighten their grip on the Internet, Meta’s CEO blows a hole in years of official lies.” Taibbi emphasizes Zuckerberg’s use of the term “censor” and “censorship” to describe the pressure on Facebook. Taibbi fits the letter into our current circumstances:

Like other tech CEOs, Zuckerberg finds himself between a rock and a hard place. From one side, he sees subpoenas and investigations of censorship. From the other, he faces strident demands on content from authorities whose idea of “accountability” has gone beyond crippling penalties to detention. This is not just coming from Europeans. Former National Security Council and White House official Alexander Vindman reacted to the Durov news by referencing a “growing intolerance for platforming disinfo” and a “growing appetite for accountability.” His specific threat was to Elon Musk…

Zuckerberg comments on Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post’s stories on Hunter Biden laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election at the urging of the FBI leap from the text. The FBI had taken possession of the laptop in 2019. It knew the laptop and its contents were authentic. It sought to protect then candidate Biden from the exposure of the Biden family business and protect his path to the presidency. The FBI engaged blatantly in the “election interference” that it imputed to Russia. In this context, “election interference” is a pathetic euphemism for monumental government misconduct. Yet here we are — here we are again.

Zuckerberg’s mea culpa is tardy. He names no names. The FBI perpetrators remain at large, as do the Deep State 51 who emerged to support the FBI censorship campaign. Nevertheless, it is good to have the letter on the record.

The New York Post’s laptop coverage was Pulitzer-worthy in the old-fashioned sense. I want to note the Post’s coverage of Zuckerberg’s letter. Victor Nava has the straight news story “Zuckerberg admits Biden admin pressured Facebook to censor COVID content, says it was wrong to suppress The Post’s Hunter laptop coverage.” Nava’s story includes copies of the Post covers that flagged the laptop stories.

Post business reporter Thomas Barrabi notes “Facebook posts censored at Biden admin’s demand include COVID-19 memes, satire.” Post columnist Kristen Fleming comments on the forbidden laughter here.

As President Muffley almost says in Dr. Strangelove: “Gentlemen, you can’t laugh in here. This is the disinformation war room.”

The Post devotes an editorial to the current relevance of this history: “Mark Zuckerberg coming clean on Facebook censorship matters because Harris-Walz would amp up the speech controls.” As Winston Smith is instructed in 1984:

“[A]lways — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”

Zuckerberg states that Facebook sent “the Post story to fact-checkers for review[.]” Every element of the story was accurate and authenticated. It would be nice to see the timeline of Facebook’s work and the work product. They would tell a story all by themselves. (PowerlineBlog, 8/28/2024)

(…) And speaking for itself, the Post homes in on the points I tried to make in an important editorial — “Zuck still has a LOT of questions to answer on suppression of The Post’s Hunter-laptop scoops.” The Post’s editors elaborate on the issues raised by the alleged third-party fact-checking to which Facebook subjected its coverage (emphasis in original):

Coming up on four years later, we still haven’t seen the results of that supposed “third-party fact-check,” though of course a vast pack of outfits from Politico to The New York Times eventually admitted that we were right on everything.

Was there ever actually a check for Facebook? Who was the third party? Does Meta have any data on how extensive the suppression was?

Actually, here’s a list of topics that outside investigators should resolve:

1) Share all the relevant communications up to and on the day of us publishing the laptop story. Not just the FBI warnings about Russian disinfo on Hunter, but all the “private sector” ones too.

We know now that many “private” outfits declaring themselves experts were funded by branches of the US government and the UK Labour party, plus plenty the politically partisan “dark money.”

2) How long did the demotion last and exactly how many voters would likely have seen it if it wasn’t suppressed?

This should include the numbers of people trying to share it.

3) When did it actually go to fact-checkers?

4) Who were the fact-checkers and what were their partisan affiliations?

5) Why did Facebook ignore our protestations, not just in those first days but in the long term, too?

6) While the story itself was suppressed, we also know that in doing so, all of our content and that of conservative outlets sharing it was also downgraded for a much longer period of time.

We want full details on those decisions, too — complete with insight into the communication behind them, and the scale and impact of the downgrades.

Finally, 7) Explain why no center-right leaning outfit has ever been approved as a Facebook fact-checker.

Read the whole thing here.

(Read more: PowerlineBlog, 8/29/2024)