Zuckerberg's letter on Facebook censorship.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. Ukrainian forces struck two oil depots inside Russia overnight, while Russia launched its third major aerial attack on Ukraine in the past week. (The attacks)
2. Israel launched airstrikes and raids in multiple cities in the West Bank yesterday, killing at least 10 Hamas militants, according to Hamas and Israeli officials. The operation is one of the largest in the West Bank in 20 years. (The raids)
3. An FBI report found that the shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump had done research on the campaign schedules of Trump and President Joe Biden, and viewed Trump’s Pennsylvania rally as an opportunity. Law enforcement has still not identified a motive. (The report)
4. The Supreme Court maintained its pause on President Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan while a lower court considers the case. (The ruling)
5. French authorities released Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from police custody but charged him with a series of crimes, including complicity in distributing child pornography, illegal drugs, and hacking software on the messaging app. (The charges)

Today's topic.

Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to Congress. On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee claiming that the Biden administration had pressured the company to "censor" content related to Covid-19 in 2021. Zuckerberg also said that Meta should not have temporarily suppressed a 2020 New York Post story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop while it waited for fact-checkers to verify the article’s details. 

Back up: The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), has claimed that Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and other social media platforms have censored conservative speech online. In July 2023, Jordan threatened to hold Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a probe into social media censorship; Zuckerberg and other social media executives have been subject to heightened Congressional scrutiny in the past year. 

The issues referenced in Zuckerberg’s letter stem from a push against misinformation about Covid during the first year of President Biden’s term. That year, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a surgeon general's advisory that highlighted the "urgent threat" of false information about the pandemic, while Biden said misinformation about Covid vaccines was “killing people” (a statement he later walked back). In 2022, a group of Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration over an alleged pressure campaign on social media companies to suppress posts that it thought would contribute to vaccine hesitancy. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the Biden administration, but Congressional Republicans have continued to investigate related claims. 

Separately, in October 2020, when the New York Post published the story detailing the contents of a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, containing salacious photographs and email exchanges between Hunter and an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Soon after the piece was released, Twitter blocked it from being shared and Facebook throttled the story over the FBI’s claims that the material was Russian disinformation. The emails were later authenticated, and then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for blocking the story. 

What just happened: Zuckerberg’s letter is his own mea culpa for Facebook’s handling of both pandemic-related content and the Hunter Biden laptop story. “The Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding, “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret we were not more outspoken about it.” 

Zuckerberg also said the decision to throttle the Hunter Biden story was prompted by an advance FBI warning about a potential Russian disinformation campaign in the lead up to the 2020 election, but wrote, “In retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story. We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again.”

Finally, Zuckerberg noted that he will no longer fund local election jurisdictions to help them administer elections, writing that while previous donations were intended to be nonpartisan and spread across urban, rural and suburban communities, they created a perception that “this work benefited one party over the other.”

After the release of the letter, House Republicans called it “a big win for free speech,” adding that it validated their longstanding assertions about censorship on Facebook. 

Today, we’ll explore arguments from the left and right about Zuckerberg’s letter and the debate over censorship online. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes the letter, arguing that Zuckerberg is complaining about acceptable government behavior. 
• Some say Zuckerberg is pandering to Republicans. 
• Others suggest the letter is a strategic move to take attention off Meta.

In Newsweek, Jason Fields said “Zuckerberg's problem isn't free speech, it's lies.”

“Social media has always been about us promoting ourselves and our ideas to friends, family, and—if you get lucky or the algorithmic gods grab you—the wider world. What it has not been about is supplying the world with accurate information,” Fields wrote. “At its most malevolent, some individual or group posts information that's false and can harm others, or even kill them. Like maybe telling people not to get a vaccine to protect themselves against a deadly disease, for fun… A government agency responsible for the public's health and welfare should certainly have the same freedom to report something as a crabby individual who thinks that your new swimsuit is too revealing.”

“So, let's see if we've got all this straight: The head of one of the largest tech companies has sent a letter to Congress complaining about how his own company behaved during the COVID epidemic when asked by the government to get the story straight,” Fields said. “Whichever party is in control of the levers of government, the government gets to ask—not tell. Facebook gets to say yes or no. Everything else is purely an internal issue for Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley's people of conscience, it doesn't have anything to do with the First Amendment.”

In CNN, Jon Passantino called the letter an “election-season gift to Republicans.”

“In recent days, the Meta chief executive has made newsworthy public statements implicitly supporting right-wing ‘censorship’ narratives and offered praise for Donald Trump as ‘badass’ – even as he claimed he wanted to appear ‘neutral’ and nonpartisan,” Passantino said. “Zuckerberg’s decision to describe the White House’s attempts to flag Covid misinformation as pressure and censorship came despite a 6-3 decision this summer by the Supreme Court ruling that the federal government had not overstepped by asking platforms to take down potential misinformation.

“But Zuckerberg’s letter publicly played into the hands of Republicans, who have long falsely claimed that social media platforms colluded with liberal government officials to censor conservative voices… In recent years, the platforms run by Zuckerberg and billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk have eliminated many of the guardrails designed to reduce the spread of viral misinformation, including allowing Trump to return after he was banned in the wake of the January 6 attack,” Passantino wrote. “The remarks show Zuckerberg offering Republicans an olive branch ahead of the election, and some political ammunition to wit.”

In Bloomberg, Dave Lee wrote “Zuckerberg’s free-speech ‘mea culpa’ is a sleight of hand.”

“Zuckerberg is bending Jordan’s committee to his own benefit: repackaging old apologies or statements and taking the chance to shore up his company’s defenses against undue government pressure in the future — no matter who ends up in the White House in January,” Lee said. “Jordan’s investigation began with a desired conclusion before working backward to pick up whatever shred of questionable evidence it could find to support it, contorting acceptable acts of social network governance into high crimes against freedom of speech. The committee’s efforts have achieved little other than noisy headlines.

“With his letter, Zuckerberg gives Jordan his ‘I told you so’ moment, a chance to look as if he’s achieved something. But the letter’s critical admissions had been made publicly long ago,” Lee wrote. “Zuckerberg’s letter is more evidence that the 40-year-old has gained considerable wisdom in his years as a regular Capitol Hill punching bag. He’s given Jordan his hollow victory lap while giving up nothing his company hadn’t already surrendered. I’d call that capitalizing, not capitulating.”

What the right is saying.

• The right feels vindicated by the letter, noting that Zuckerberg affirmed several narratives once branded as conspiracies.
• Some say Zuckerberg’s mea culpa is not believable. 
• Others say the letter tacitly admits that Meta made content decisions based on government requests. 

In USA Today, Nicole Russell said “Republicans were right.”

“It's sad but not shocking that Joe Biden's White House pressured a major social media company to block Americans' access to information deemed by government censors as inappropriate. Stories about government interference with Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, have been swirling for some time,” Russell wrote. “But the fact that Zuckerberg has acknowledged years after the fact that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured the company to censor content, even jokes, during the pandemic is quite damning.”

“When something like Zuckerberg's letter becomes public, and an idea that Democrats have long claimed is petty and false turns out to be true, I wonder if the same thing could be happening about other important issues,” Russell said. “In fact, Zuckerberg pointed to one such issue in his letter Monday. He said the FBI warned Meta about a ‘potential Russian disinformation operation’ before the 2020 election involving the Biden family and Burisma… Zuckerberg said that Meta no longer demotes posts in the United States while waiting for fact-checkers to complete their work.”

In The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Debra J. Saunders wrote “Zuckerberg says Facebook will be ‘neutral.’ Too little, too late.”

“I don’t believe Zuckerberg’s claim for a minute. I don’t believe that Facebook will stand up to government pressure if Kamala Harris wins in November. Methinks the social media giant will resist only if Donald Trump wins,” Saunders said. “And really, Zuckerberg must think his critics are absolute idiots if he believes they’ll buy his newfound support for, as his letter claimed, ‘promoting speech and helping people contact in a safe and secure way.’ No, that’s the lie Silicon Valley tells to make Big Tech look open to dissenting viewpoints.”

“The man ranked the fourth-richest person in the world by Forbes has contributed to the occasional Republican, but when Zuckerberg contributed directly to campaigns, the overwhelming share of his largess went to Democrats. Of course, Zuckerberg is free to direct his money toward the political causes he holds dear. But he is not going to convince conservatives that he is ‘neutral.’”

In The Wall Street Journal, Philip Hamburger described “the ‘tell’ in Zuckerberg’s letter.”

“It’s important to look closely at what the letter says and what it doesn’t. On the one hand, Mr. Zuckerberg concedes what by now is obvious—that there was much government pressure for censorship,” Hamburger wrote. “On the other hand, he distances Meta’s censorship decisions from the government pressure… Zuckerberg (and surely his lawyers) thus admits both the pressure and the social-media censorship but carefully keeps the two apart.”

“Zuckerberg isn’t denying that the government caused some of Meta’s censorship decisions. The letter is too carefully drafted to say something so obviously untrue,” Hamburger said. “The closest the letter comes to admitting causation is Mr. Zuckerberg’s assertion that he told his teams at the time that ‘we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction—and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.’ This sounds like bold defiance. But ‘if something like that happens again’ suggests that Meta didn’t push back when it happened before—a backhanded admission that government pressure caused Meta to ‘compromise.’”

My take.

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• Republicans will likely see this letter as an admission of guilt while Democrats will probably see it as a conspiracy theorist dog whistle.
• More than anything, I see a social media company saying it will resist government pressure to moderate content as a good thing.
• It’s worth noting what motivations Zuckerberg has to release a letter like this. 

Zuckerberg's letter is written in a way that allows people to see what they want to see.

For Republicans and many conservative voters, it's a confirmation of a giant government conspiracy to pressure the platform and interfere in the 2020 election. Zuckerberg says explicitly that he was pressured by the Biden administration in 2021 to remove content that included humor and satire about Covid-19 vaccines, and says his team acted erroneously on warnings from the FBI late in Trump’s term about a purported Russian disinformation campaign when he temporarily throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story. For people on the right, this is an affirmation of their worst fears.

For Democrats and many liberal voters, it's another wink-wink to conservative conspiracy theories from a billionaire tech mogul, and it plays directly into narratives that have been carefully cultivated by figures like Donald Trump. To people on the left, Zuckerberg should be viewed as someone acting purely out of self-interest, not as someone blowing the whistle on government corruption.

Unsurprisingly, I think there is some merit to both of these lenses. My headline reading is that I unequivocally think Zuckerberg writing and releasing this letter is a good thing. He is sending a strong signal to the federal government — no matter who is leading it — that one of the world’s biggest social media companies is going to hold its ground on content moderation decisions going forward. He is correct, self-evidently, that the government has tried to exert pressure on companies like Facebook to moderate their content in ways the government sees fit, which is a dangerous precedent leaders like him should reject.

While I've never supported the federal government exerting the kind of pressure Facebook insiders have described on social media companies, I think there are some instances (with vaccine information, for example) where it's easy to understand why they would. It is simultaneously true that legitimate arguments about Covid-19 vaccines were stifled online and that health outcomes for people who got Covid after being vaccinated were still much better, so federal health agencies had an obvious incentive to do things that would help get people vaccinated.

In a similar vein, it is simultaneously true that Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story, which could have impacted the 2020 election, and that by doing so they didn't actually limit the reach of the story — they gave it more legs. Remember: Facebook only briefly slowed the story’s sharing, as did Twitter. It then went full-blown Streisand effect: The story was front and center in public discourse for weeks leading up to the election. Personally, I never thought “Russia” had anything to do with the story; I thought it reeked of a low-brow political hit job, but I was also adamantly opposed to Facebook and Twitter limiting its reach. More to the point, I covered it — for weeks and months on end — and still am in 2024. But the warning about Russian interference came from the FBI under Trump’s administration — so it’s important to remember this wasn’t proof of Biden meddling with the agency.

All this is to say: Content moderation decisions for the world’s largest social media companies — balancing free speech with public health and government pressure — are complicated; and they have complicated outcomes. Which brings me to my final point: This letter is about decisions that Zuckerberg and Facebook made, something he takes ownership of, and Zuckerberg released it at a time when Facebook is being investigated by the House. It’s hard to tell if Zuckerberg’s letter (along with other recent comments praising Trump) is some genuine shift away from the left akin to what we’ve seen from tech leaders like Elon Musk and others. But considering the timing, it’s perhaps more plausible that he’s acting out of self interest — giving Republicans messaging ammunition without admitting wrongdoing to placate House Republicans investigating his company. 

Whatever his motivation, Zuckerberg still outlined solid standards: The government can ask social media platforms to remove content, but those companies have no obligation to comply. Hopefully, Zuckerberg has learned from past mistakes, and future administrations have learned from Biden’s mistakes, too.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: This is a thought experiment that has been on my mind for some time. If you, Isaac Saul, were to moderate a U.S. presidential debate in 2024 as the chair for a 3-5 person panel, who would you choose as the other panelists? Obviously you represent the center, or at least the person who has a demonstrated record of attempting to avoid bias in his reporting and dispassionately assess both sides of an argument. Would you select big name, independent figures like Bill O'Reilly for the right and Jon Stewart for the left, or more mainstream names like Sean Hannity and Anderson Cooper? Or do you have a dream team of relative unknowns who would properly represent their political preference, and present fair questions without letting the event degrade into a partisan farce?

— Nate from Fountain, Colorado

Tangle: I love this question! I would definitely not pick someone like Jon Stewart (comedian) or Sean Hannity (pretending to be a journalist). Bill O'Reilly is interesting; he is more of a straight shooter than a lot of his ex-colleagues, but he's still very partisan. That being said, I had a very good time interviewing him, and he makes for great TV. Anderson Cooper is actually a nice mirror to O'Reilly — clearly a lefty who claims he’s centrist — and if I had them together it'd bring some balance. Cooper, though, is a far better correspondent (reporting from on the ground) than he is an interviewer.

Five is probably too many panelists — and despite your offer, I don’t think I need to be involved — so I’ll pick four people to oversee the debate. Since nobody is genuinely in the middle, I would pick two people who are center-ish and two overt partisans.

First, I'd tap Jonathan Swan, who in my opinion is the best interviewer alive right now. His interview with Trump from 2020 makes a lot of people think he is a "liberal," but the reality is he is just a tough interviewer who asks sharp questions and is quick on his feet. As far as I can tell, he is pretty close to the center, or at least does his job in a fair way, even if he sometimes tips his hand to being left of center.

Second, I'd choose former BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil. First, because I think it would be good to have someone who doesn’t just focus on U.S. issues on the panel. Second, because he is a fantastic interviewer. And third, because even though he is conservative, this is how he interviews other conservatives. He is a total pitbull.

Third, for my liberal panelist, I'd choose Mehdi Hasan. He is simply one of the sharpest interviewers I've ever seen. Importantly, he is also experienced with doing interviews on live television and scrapping with political opponents in front of an audience. Other potential panelists, like Isaac Chotiner, can ask biting, “gotcha” questions — but I’ve never seen them do TV or live debates.

The fourth and final spot, for my conservative panelist, would go to Catherine Herridge, the recently fired CBS reporter. She is an incredible journalist who knows how the sausage is made at the major networks, and has broken a lot of very important stories other reporters won’t touch. She also seems unafraid of upsetting the masses. Other potential panelists like Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro come to mind, but I think they’d spend too much time pontificating and not enough time asking good questions. 

There’s my dream panel: Jonathan Swan, Andrew Neil, Mehdi Hasan, and Catherine Herridge. That'd be a raucous time!

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Under the radar.

According to a new report from Fidelity investments, a record number of 401(k) accounts have breached the million-dollar threshold. Last quarter, Fidelity managed about 497,000 “401(k) millionaires,” representing a 2.5% increase from 485,000 accounts in the first quarter of 2024. Fidelity’s analysis includes 24 million 401(k) accounts across 26,000 employer-sponsored plans, and shows that the average 401(k) account balance is up 13 percent from a year ago while the average IRA account is up 14 percent. “Retirement savers in the second quarter of 2024 benefited from the continued upswing of the previous quarter, when contribution levels and average account balances reached record highs,” said Sharon Brovelli, president of workplace investing at Fidelity Investments. The Hill has the story.

Numbers.

• 20 million. The approximate number of pieces of content removed from Facebook and Instagram in Q2 2021 for violating the platforms’ policies on Covid-19-related misinformation, according to Meta. 
• 3,000. The approximate number of accounts, pages, and groups removed from Facebook and Instagram in Q2 2021 for repeatedly violating the platforms’ rules against spreading Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation.
• 190 million. The approximate number of warnings displayed by Meta in Q2 2021 on Covid-related content on Facebook that its third-party fact-checking partners rated as false, partly false, altered or missing context. 
• 55%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe the U.S. government should take steps to restrict false information online, up 16% from 2018, according to Pew Research.
• 65%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online, up 9% from 2018. 
• 42%. The percentage of U.S. adults who believe freedom of information should be protected even if it means false information can be published, down 16% from 2018. 
• 64%. The percentage of Americans who don’t trust the government to make fair decisions about what information is allowed to be posted on social media platforms, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. 
• 79% and 52%. The percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, who don’t trust the government to make fair decisions about what information is allowed to be posted on social media.

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the announcement of the first Harris-Walz interview. 
• Nothing to do with politics: What every European country calls Germany, and why.
• Yesterday’s survey: 602 readers responded to our survey on the recent exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel with 71% saying the chances of an escalation are more or less the same. “Israel is very reactive; if Hezbollah attacked, and the attack was large enough, Israel would retaliate with extreme force. Striking them before they could launch an attack probably muted or delayed escalation in the long run. As for if this will significantly change the course of these growing tensions, we will see,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Rebecca and Joshua Hampton, two young siblings in Chesapeake, Virginia, decided to start a familiar summertime venture for kids: a lemonade stand at the end of their driveway. They had earned about $40 in sales when a young man approached them, acting like a customer, and robbed them of their earnings (he has since been arrested). Undeterred, the Hamptons opened their stand the next weekend, and they received a boost of support from their community. Neighbors, firefighters, city council members, police officers, and motorcycle groups all came together to help the siblings pull in over $6,200 in sales. 13News Now has the story.

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