NASHVILLE (BP) — A letter sent from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reporting pressure from the White House to censor Facebook content should remind Christians that “nothing is truly neutral in the public square.”
“This [is a] deeply disturbing revelation from Meta about content moderation policies and the undue influence of the Biden administration,” said Jason Thacker, senior fellow and director of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s Research Institute.
In his Aug. 26 letter addressed to Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that “senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House” pressured Facebook “repeatedly” in 2021 to censor some content related to COVID-19. That content included humor and satire.
“We own our decisions,” said Zuckerberg on his company’s not protesting at the time, but added “… We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
The Biden administration also pressured Facebook to “demote” a New York Post story in the leadup to the 2020 election that the FBI had marked as “potential Russian disinformation.”
“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The letter only mentioned the Post story as involving “Joe Biden’s family.” This was the same time frame, though, that the New York Post published an article about Biden’s son, Hunter, and a laptop dropped off to a Delaware computer shop that contained emails linking the Democrat presidential candidate’s son, Hunter Biden, to corruption.
A DOJ filing earlier this month, alleges Hunter Biden’s role in receiving money from foreign governments, the Hill reported.
According to Zuckerberg, those articles were essentially buried by Facebook’s algorithm.
“Every policy and moderation decision is promoting someone’s vision of the right and the good,” said Thacker, “which is one of the key reasons Christians must remain steadfast champions of free speech and religious freedom for all, especially in the digital domain.
“It’s important to remember this as we engage online and seek to navigate the waters of information overload with wisdom.”
The news comes at a time when many view the media as having failed in its basic task of informing the public. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 30 percent of U.S. adults said they regularly get their news from Facebook.
“Not only is misinformation a plague on a well-functioning society, but the haphazard labeling of ideas one simply does not like or disagrees with as misinformation or fake news is as well,” Thacker said. “As we are reminded in James 1:19, we should all be slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen, which is especially relevant in our digital-first world.
“The pursuit of truth should not be a partisan issue and government censorship of speech is at odds with a Christian vision of the common good.”
Jason Thacker
Read the Baptist Press article here.
