Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Suppressed Hunter Biden Laptop Story
After receiving warnings from the FBI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told popular podcaster Joe Rogan this week that Facebook did limit stories on the news feed related to the New York Post story about President Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his laptop, but defended the law enforcement agency as a “legitimate institution.”
On an edition of Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which was released on Thursday, Zuckerberg stated that the FBI contacted his company before of the 2020 presidential election to warn them about potentially polarizing content. This warning came after Russia exploited social media sites, including Facebook, to spread controversial propaganda ahead of the 2016 election.
Zuckerberg stated that he took the warning very seriously. He stated that the social media site did not prohibit individuals from sharing the Post’s news, but it did limit how frequently the story appeared in feeds.
According to The Washington Post, the FBI obtained a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden as part of a federal investigation into him just before the 2020 election.
Former President Trump and some of his supporters seized on the news at the time as evidence that Hunter engaged in unethical business transactions when his father was vice president. Some of the emails on the laptop have since been verified as genuine, but no misconduct by the president or his son has been established.
Last month, the case involving Hunter Biden reached a crossroads as prosecutors considered whether to indict him.