Don’t fall for Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to Jim Jordan about censorship

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg threw some red meat to the MAGA crowd on Tuesday.

And based on some of the headlines alone, one could be forgiven for believing, at first glance, that Zuckerberg’s allegation of having been “repeatedly pressured” by the Biden administration to remove social media content that conservatives have obsessed over was, well, rooted in fact and principle rather than politics.

That’s why I’ve appreciated the outlets that framed Zuckerberg’s letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan properly: as a rhetorical gift — or mere groveling — to Republicans at a key moment in a critical election.

For context, Republicans have spent the past few years crowing about purported censorship and anti-conservative bias by the government and social media companies. And after all that time, including several House hearings and closed-door interviews, they’ve got nothing to show for it. In fact, all they’ve proved is that content moderation is a difficult task that is — and this is crucial — fundamentally left to social media companies to handle on their own.

But Zuckerberg’s letter nonetheless aligned with conservatives’ claims. He showed contrition for not having been “more outspoken” about the “government pressure” he claims his companies faced from the White House in 2021 to remove certain content related to Covid-19, some of which he portrayed as “humor and satire.” But he then acknowledged that the decision about what content to allow was Meta’s, saying he feels strongly that his companies, including Facebook and Instagram, “should not compromise” their own standards.

He also said that Meta shouldn’t have “demoted” a news story about the Biden family and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Republicans often point to this action as proof of anti-conservative bias, despite the fact that the guidance came from the Justice Department during the Trump administration — not exactly a bastion of liberalism.

Zuckerberg also wrote that he won’t be making financial contributions toward boosting the country’s electoral infrastructure — as he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, did in 2020 — in order to “be neutral.” Republicans have falsely said these grants unfairly aided Democrats, and Zuckerberg essentially cowed to them.

But let’s keep it real: The Meta CEO has seemed far from “neutral” this election cycle.

Zuckerberg has sucked up to Donald Trump, saying that seeing the former president “get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.” He has made it harder to track the spread of misinformation on his platforms, and his company has also hired a former Project 2025 employee.

Disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz wrote a great thread on X in which she made the case that Zuckerberg’s letter is all about self-preservation … and copying Elon Musk’s fealty to conservatives.

Check out Jankowicz’s full thread here.