Late last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said senior officials from the Biden administration pressured the social media giant to censor potentially misleading COVID-19 content in 2021. In a letter sent to House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Zuckerberg stated he believes the pressure from the government was wrong and that he regrets that Meta was not more outspoken on the matter, adding that the company would not make the same decisions today.
“I feel strongly 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,” Zuckerberg wrote.
A spokesperson for the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating, “Our position has been clear and consistent: We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present.”
While corporate policy may lie outside philanthropy’s purview, the good of the American people is something that countless philanthropic funders claim to support — including, one assumes, the cofounder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Meanwhile, with their immense fortunes in hand, tech moguls like Zuckerberg are taking up more and more space in the philanthrosphere, and will in no small part determine how this sector develops through the 21st century.
That’s why it’s particularly concerning that the social media networks these figures lead have become notorious not only for being hotbeds of misinformation but for not doing enough to curtail it.
Social media can be a great way to disseminate real-time information quickly, especially when it comes to things like alerting the public about natural disasters and other emergency situations. Misinformation on social media, however, should be a concern for funders of all stripes. For one thing, this misinformation could literally contribute to more deaths. Let us not forget that during the peak of the pandemic, misleading social media posts about the cause, prevention, treatment and spread of COVID-19 were rife. These posts included potentially fatal measures such as rinsing food with bleach and inhaling or ingesting disinfectants, as well as the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments. That’s not to mention discouraging the use of masks and spreading misinformation regarding the safety and efficacy of FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, it’s stating the obvious to say that misinformation and disinformation on social media also poses a grave threat to American democracy. In that sense, the timing of Zuckerberg’s letter is also concerning, considering the election is less than two months away.
We’ve seen some philanthropic funders take action. In late 2021, for instance, the Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Craig Newmark Philanthropies partnered to fund a three-year, $10 million effort by the Social Science Research Council to push back against misinformation and disinformation on public health in the wake of the pandemic. As we’ve written, philanthropy’s fight against disinformation, which ramped up significantly after the 2016 election, has drawn support from other big names, as well, including the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Knight Foundation and the Democracy Fund.
Curbing misinformation has not been a prime focus at CZI, however, despite that organization’s commitment to “tech solutions.” And as Zuckerberg’s recent comments make clear, things aren’t going in a promising direction on the corporate side, either. In 2021, Meta published information about its efforts to combat misinformation, noting it removed “COVID-19-related material that global health experts have flagged as misinformation, removing more than 12 million pieces of content about COVID-19 and vaccines.” But since then, it, along with other social media platforms like X, have scaled back many of their efforts to combat misinformation.
Last year, Meta announced that its policy to curb COVID-19 misinformation would no longer be in effect around the globe — only in countries that still have COVID-19 public health declarations in place — but that it would continue to remove content that violates its “misinformation policies, given the risk of imminent physical harm.” It’s unclear what this will look like moving forward. X, then Twitter, stopped enforcing its COVID-19 misinformation policy in 2022.
Zuckerberg’s letter should be ringing alarm bells. Hidden under the guise of opposing censorship — a position other tech leaders, including X Chairman Elon Musk, have taken — and expressing concern over the alleged oversteps of the Biden administration, lurks the ever-increasing proliferation of dangerous content online, with diminishing guardrails and attempts to police it. While Zuckerberg’s letter could be seen simply as an attempt to court the sympathies of Republican politicians, Meta’s decision to roll back some of its misinformation protections speaks to a broader trend.
To Zuckerberg’s point, it’s understandable to be concerned about censorship right now. After all, we’re seeing a rise in book bans, laws restricting what can be taught in public schools, and limits on drag performances. And it’s certainly not easy to tackle misinformation, especially on social media platforms. Once misinformation is published on the internet, it’s almost impossible to permanently remove it.
Nevertheless, these platforms have a responsibility to their users and to society at large to ensure the content they host isn’t causing harm, and it’s disconcerting that so many of these platforms are rolling back their misinformation protections.
So what’s the good news? Misinformation on social media impacts a number of areas in which philanthropy operates, including health, democracy, education, social justice and other issues. And while philanthropy cannot solve the issue alone, there’s much that funders can do. Perhaps one of the most effective and important steps is to support policy advocacy to better hold social media platforms accountable. Zuckerberg is wrong. The government should not only be pressuring tech companies to better police their platforms, it should be engaging in greater oversight.
There have already been congressional hearings on social media’s role in proliferating misinformation. Zuckerberg himself acknowledges Meta’s participation in some of these hearings in his letter to Jordan. Philanthropy can, and should, continue to fund organizations seeking to pressure public officials to ensure tech companies reinstate, improve and enforce policies related to misinformation, and mandate more transparency about the inner workings of their companies. And as we saw with philanthropy’s support of the Social Science Research Council’s work, funders can also back research on the effects misinformation has on public health and democracies, or policy guides for what steps lawmakers could take.
While his recent moves have been discouraging, Mark Zuckerberg is in a unique position as both a leader in tech and a major funder. He could lead by example through Meta while also supporting other accountability efforts through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Given our increasing reliance on technology and the popularity of social media platforms, the time is ripe for funders to take action and either begin or continue to support efforts to combat misinformation on social media.
