Right-wing media are pointing to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) about pandemic-era requests from the Biden administration to remove certain content as proof of their longstanding and baseless claims of social media censorship. 

One Fox News contributor even compared Facebook’s content moderation policies to the Taliban’s recently adopted restriction on women speaking in public.

Zuckerberg said in an August 26 letter to Jordan that senior Biden administration officials had “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to “censor” some COVID-19 content during the pandemic and that he regretted demoting some content about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election period after FBI warnings about potential Russian disinformation. 

He also vowed that the platform would push back if faced with similar demands again, saying: “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. … We’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

On CNN, technology journalist Kara Swisher explained why Zuckerberg’s claims in the letter are “nonsense” and that there is no evidence Meta is biased against conservatives, also noting that Zuckerberg “was not under oath” while making his claims.

For years, right-wing media and conservative politicians have falsely claimed that social media platforms, including Facebook, are biased against them and censor their content, despite data from Media Matters and others showing otherwise.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court also rejected vague allegations that the government tried to censor a group of individuals who had content removed or suppressed on social media, with the court finding that the individuals did not show that the government had harmed them, and seemingly allowing the Biden administration to urge platforms to remove misinformation.

Meta’s letter appears to follow the platform’s pattern of capitulating to right-wing pressure. The company has also backslid on efforts made after the 2020 election to combat misinformation. Since the start of 2022, Meta has gradually reverted to old policies and practices, restoring previously banned accounts of political candidates and vowing not to fact-check them.

Right-wing media figures — particularly on Fox News — suggested Zuckerberg’s letter proves Facebook was censoring conservatives, with some calling it a “First Amendment” violation:

• Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier suggested that there had been “complete censorship,” comparing Facebook removing content to the Taliban banning women from speaking in public. Saphier said: “This week, we learned that the Taliban made it illegal for women to speak out in public. And that media headline’s already gone because that's the sort of human rights violations that we expect in Islamic republics, communist nations. Not in our democratic republic. And that is what's happened here, is complete censorship, complete abolition of our First Amendment rights.”
• Infowars host Alex Jones posted the letter and said that Zuckerberg had worked “with the Biden-Harris administration to censor Covid era information online,” adding, “The rats are fleeing the sinking ship.”
• Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy said the letter showed that the “government [was] putting its thumb on the scale and intimidating tech companies into taking actions,” and anchor Bret Baier responded that “there is this want to continue censorship.” He added,“The question is whether this letter is the beginning of opening eyes about how much that’s happening.” 
• Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson posted the letter and said that “Zuckerberg just exposed the machine — and told the censors to "F*CK OFF.” He added the letter was a “good start.”
• Right-wing streamer Patrick Bet-David posted that Zuckerberg’s letter showed Facebook worked “with Biden/Harris admin to censor Americans.”
• Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich said that “it's nice [Zuckerberg] is admitting that they were wrong, they won't be doing this again hopefully, but he also had a very big role in helping the government do this as a result of those censorship policies.” Pavlich claimed that the Biden administration used social media companies, including Facebook, “as surrogates, essentially, to censor Americans and to violate their First Amendment rights by pressuring them to take factual information off of the internet, and especially when it came to narratives about COVID-19 that went against the agenda of the Biden administration.”