Zuckerberg tells Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI - ... to restrict election misinformation.

Minds twitter account posted a quick video: https://twitter.com/minds/status/1562927481945980928



https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/mark-...dling-of-the-posts-hunter-biden-laptop-story/ & https://archive.ph/xKr8V

Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan Facebook was wrong to ban The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story​

Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook made a mistake over its decision to ban sharing of The Post’s exclusive report on Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.

The billionaire CEO of Meta said he regretted Facebook’s response to the Biden story during an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast after the host pressed him to explain his views on how tech platforms should handle content moderation on sensitive subjects.

“When something like that turns out to be real, is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story?” Rogan asked about The Post’s Hunter Biden scoop.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Zuckerberg said. “It turned out after the fact, the fact-checkers looked into it, no one was able to say it was false … I think it sucks, though, in the same way that probably having to go through a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks.”

He said the platform opted to limit sharing on the story — but not halt it entirely — after the FBI told Meta employees to be wary of Russian propaganda ahead of the election. More than 50 former senior intelligence officials signed on to a letter that claimed the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

“Our protocol is different than Twitter’s. What Twitter did is they said you can’t share this at all. We didn’t do that,” Zuckerberg said.

Rogan agreed that Facebook’s approach was “certainly much more reasonable than Twitter’s stance.” The podcast host also acknowledged the difficult decision facing social media platforms regarding politically sensitive stories ahead of an election.

“I just don’t think they looked at it hard enough. When the New York Post is talking about it, they’re pretty smart about what they release and what they don’t release,” Rogan said.

“For the five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it,” Zuckerberg added. “You could still share it, you could still consume it.”

While Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had also reduced distribution of the report on its own platform, he tried to defend the process as “reasonable.”

“I think the process was pretty reasonable,” he added. “A lot of people were still able to share it,” “We got a lot of complaints that that was the case.

“This is a hyper-political issue, so depending on what side of the political spectrum, you either think we didn’t censor enough or censored it way too much, but we weren’t as black and white about it as Twitter,” he added.

The tech CEO also took thinly veiled swipes at Twitter, calling the rival social network’s ban overly “black and white.”

Twitter briefly suspended The Post’s account in 2020 after the laptop exposé revealed the existence of tens of thousands of emails between the president’s son and business associates. The emails revealed how Biden’s son leveraged his political access in his overseas business dealings.

Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook took a “different path than Twitter.” Republicans also have accused Facebook of suppressing conservative voices.

The Post has reached out to Twitter for comment on Zuckerberg’s remarks.

The tech CEO admitted that sharing of the story was meaningfully limited on Facebook after its initial publication.

“I think the right way is to establish principles for governance that try to be balanced and not having the decision-making too centralized,” Zuckerberg responded. “It’s hard for people to accept that some team at Meta or that I personally am making these decisions.”

Zuckerberg took another swipe at Twitter in a different portion of the nearly three-hour podcast interview with Rogan, saying that it’s “hard to spend time on” the platform “without getting too upset.”

He contrasted Twitter with Instagram, which is owned by his company. Zuckerberg said that it was “easy to spend time on Instagram and absorb a lot of positivity.”

JRE YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ

 
Part of the interview was posted on YouTube, and the commenters were calling out the fact that Joe should have been a lot harder on Zuckerberg, while others were confused as to why you would not want Trump on as an interviewee but have a guy who’s own Big Tech platform effectively censored most of his campaign pitches and speeches.

Overall, this one is mixed for many reasons.
 
But remember, these sites are totally platforms and not publishers, and 1st amendment protections don't apply even though these companies are completely acting as agents of the state.
Private companies can get sued for violating 1a rights if they were either acting in concert with the government or were being pressured to act by the government. it's a high standard, but an explicit admission like this is in theory grounds enough for stating a plausible claim that could survive a motion to dismiss.
 
Part of the interview was posted on YouTube, and the commenters were calling out the fact that Joe should have been a lot harder on Zuckerberg, while others were confused as to why you would not want Trump on as an interviewee but have a guy who’s own Big Tech platform effectively censored most of his campaign pitches and speeches.

Overall, this one is mixed for many reasons.
He did the same shit when he interviewed Jack Dorsey IIRC? Lots of softball questions and letting things slide that people really wanted addressed. I think a few weeks later they did a redo but brought on some pajeet Twitter lawyer and she was the one giving the evasive answers instead of Jack.

Joe Rogan is a sellout pussy who changes his opinions to agree with his guest because he wants the guests coming back for that advertising/Spotify $$$. People will get scared away if he asks the hardball questions. Having Trump on might possibly be the best podcast episode of all time, but he won't do that because Spotify has him on a tight leash after the nigger word incident.
 
Private companies can get sued for violating 1a rights if they were either acting in concert with the government or were being pressured to act by the government. it's a high standard, but an explicit admission like this is in theory grounds enough for stating a plausible claim that could survive a motion to dismiss.
Yep, state actor/action doctrine: https://www.irglobal.com/article/the-state-action-doctrine-for-federal-constitutional-claims/

Berenson hinted about this regarding his Twitter censorship at the hands of the Biden administration: https://archive.ph/zJTeK
 
He did the same shit when he interviewed Jack Dorsey IIRC? Lots of softball questions and letting things slide that people really wanted addressed. I think a few weeks later they did a redo but brought on some pajeet Twitter lawyer and she was the one giving the evasive answers instead of Jack.

Joe Rogan is a sellout pussy who changes his opinions to agree with his guest because he wants the guests coming back for that advertising/Spotify $$$. People will get scared away if he asks the hardball questions. Having Trump on might possibly be the best podcast episode of all time, but he won't do that because Spotify has him on a tight leash after the nigger word incident.
but if he asked hard questions, you wouldn't get such ridiculously incriminating admissions either.
 
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but if he asked hard questions, you wouldn't get such ridiculously incriminating admissions either.
Yeah the fact that zuckerberg even feels comfortable at all talking about this is an achievement on its own. I think if he was in a hostile interview like with Tucker Carlson he would have been a lot less forthright on his policies

This is a pretty big reveal as it was always interpretted that the media companies acted on their own. The Washington post blamed Giuliani for their reason for not publishing while others pointed to the retired intelligence community calling it disinformation. This is a pretty clear statement that the FBI came out in front of it and strong-armed the media to not publish or disseminate what they knew was a true story (they had access to the laptop for like a year). And this was with trump as their commander in chief! Wild.

This is a strong lead for a potential Congressional oversight committee (I know republicans will not grow balls)
 
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