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Mark Zuckerberg said his goal is to be politically neutral and not appear different.
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In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, he said he will not make a donation to support election infrastructure in 2024.
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He also said the Biden administration’s push to remove COVID-19-related content was misguided.
Unlike some of his fellow tech founders, Mark Zuckerberg says he’s not interested in politics in 2024.
In a letter sent Monday to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and an outspoken critic of Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO said his goal was to remain “neutral.”
“My goal is to be neutral and not to play a role in any way, or even appear to play a role,” Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Business Insider and first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg said that unlike in the last presidential election, he does not plan to donate to support election infrastructure in 2024. In 2020, he and his wife donated $400 million to nonpartisan organizations that helped organize elections during the pandemic. Republicans dubbed them “Zuckerbucks” and claimed they benefited Democrats in the election.
“They were designed to be nonpartisan — spread across urban, rural and suburban communities. Yet, despite the analyses I’ve seen that show otherwise, I know some people believe this work benefited one party over the other,” he wrote.
While the donations have long been controversial, a study published in May in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that private donations, such as Zuckerberg’s, did not benefit Democrats.
In the letter, Zuckerberg also addressed Meta’s content moderation, an issue that has been fiercely criticized by Jordan and other Republicans, accusing the social media platform of censoring conservative views.
Zuckerberg said the Biden administration repeatedly pressured Meta to remove content related to COVID-19 in 2021 and “expressed a lot of frustration” when the company didn’t comply.
Internal Meta emails obtained by the Journal last year showed the company had removed content related to COVID-19 after pressure from the White House.
“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to remove content, and we are accountable for our decisions, including the COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in response to this pressure,” Zuckerberg wrote. He added: “I believe the government pressure was misguided, and I regret that we were not more transparent about this.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
In 2023, Jordan Zuckerberg threatened to plead guilty to contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents related to censorship of conservative views.
Zuckerberg also acknowledged that Meta suppressed a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop pending a fact-finding investigation, adding: “In hindsight, we should not have downgraded the story.”
He said the company has changed its processes to prevent this from happening again, including no longer demoting stories pending fact-checking.
Zuckerberg previously said that Meta was wrong to hide the story about the laptop.
Meta declined to comment when asked by BI.
Read the original article on Business Insider
