The FBI had already alerted the Meta CEO about potential “Russian propaganda,” therefore he decided to hide the news report, according to the CEO
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claims that after federal law enforcement advised him to be “vigilant” about foreign misinformation, his platform helped to limit the reach of an explosive report regarding President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
During an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Thursday, Zuckerberg went into great detail about the controversy and defended Facebook’s response to a New York Post report that was published before the 2020 election and claimed that Hunter Biden had engaged in a number of shady business dealings, according to documents taken from one of his laptops.
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While the CEO noted that Facebook “took a different path than Twitter” – which outright banned the story and even prevented users from sharing it in direct messages – he said his team ultimately decided to limit the spread of the article based on advice he had received from the FBI.
Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that the FBI reached out to Facebook to put them on notice that the Hunter Biden’s laptop story was similar to the previous Russian Propaganda and to be on high alert #joerogan #MarkZuckerberg #JRE pic.twitter.com/ojZHhK3isa
— Giuseppe Mercadante (@itsmercadante) August 25, 2022
“The background here is the FBI basically came to us and was like ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election; we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So be vigilant,’” he said, paraphrasing the words of a federal agent.
When Rogan questioned Zuckerberg about whether the FBI had specifically brought up the in question New York Post item, Zuckerberg replied that he couldn’t remember but added that “it generally fit the pattern” established by the organization.
We just kind of thought, if the FBI – which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it’s very professional law enforcement – if they come to us and tell us we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.
He also failed to provide any information regarding the timing of his communications with the bureau, including whether they took place before or after the allegations made in a letter from numerous former intelligence officials that the Hunter Biden story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The ex-officials said they were “very skeptical” about the damning article while not providing any evidence to back up their claim.
While several media sites first brushed off the laptop story, with NPR even calling it pointless and adamantly refusing to cover it, prominent organizations have subsequently changed their tune and accepted the veracity of the documents.
According to Zuckerberg, Facebook made an effort to fact-check the article in the first week or so after the laptop story was published and, in the meanwhile, reduced the “distribution” of the story through the platform’s news feed algorithm.
“The newsfeed ranking was a little bit lower. So, less individuals saw it than would have otherwise, he said, adding that the statistic was “significant” even though he was unable to specify how many users were stopped from viewing the item.Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey has apologized for how the platform responded to the Hunter Biden story, calling it a “huge mistake” even though Zuckerberg continues to defend Facebook’s less harsh approach. Nevertheless, both selections drew harsh criticism from Republicans and conservative opponents of the Biden family, many of whom think that social media behemoths are biased against the left.
The source used in the creation of a news story: https://www.rt.com
