Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently revealed that Facebook killed the Hunter Biden laptop story following a warning from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about a potential “Russian disinformation operation.” In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg acknowledged that the decision should not have been made and has since altered Facebook’s policies to avoid similar incidents in the future.
Zuckerberg explained that after being warned by the FBI about a potential Russian disinformation operation involving President Joe Biden’s family, Facebook decided to kill an article from the New York Post regarding corruption allegations against the Biden family. The company sent the story to fact-checkers and temporarily demoted it while awaiting their response. However, Zuckerberg admitted that “it’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation” and in retrospect, they “shouldn’t have demoted the story.
Facebook has changed its policies to prevent this from happening again, including no longer temporarily demoting content in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers. Emma-Jo Morris, Breitbart News Political Editor, had previously testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that the FBI was aware of the Hunter Biden laptop being real prior to December 2019, well before she published a story about it in October 2020.
Zuckerberg’s admission comes after Emma-Jo Morris had previously testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government that the FBI had knowledge that the Hunter Biden laptop was real prior to December 2019, long before she had published a story about it in October 2020. The Meta CEO explained that the FBI had “warned” about a possible “Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election.
Despite the FBI being aware of the laptop, frequently communicating with Twitter and Facebook officials before the 2020 election, when Morris first reported on the laptop story, both companies censored the story and Americans sharing it based on the possibility that it could be Russian disinformation.