After the FBI intervened in 2020, Mark Zuckerberg dropped the shocking fact that Facebook had purposefully employed an algorithm to stifle news of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The New York Post exposed the shady contents of the computer three weeks before the election, including compromising images of the son of the then-presidential candidate and his dubious business activities that implicated his father.
Many believed the massive collection of documents, emails, and pictures may have changed the outcome of the election, but Facebook and Twitter’s social media managers suppressed the story out of baseless concern that it could include Russian disinformation.
While many other news sites declined to cover the issue, DailyMail.com independently validated the laptop via a forensic examination by leading cyber specialists and has subsequently published findings on a daily basis.
But now that Zuckerberg has publicly acknowledged how he attempted to prevent voters from viewing the articles, it is alarming to think about how easily digital companies may damage democracy.
The remarks have caused outrage, with many claiming that the FBI and Facebook influenced the election via censorship. This raises further concerns about the objectivity of spy chief Chris Wray, who authorized the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Zuckerberg said that Twitter went even farther and removed the item from its platform, while Facebook instituted a strategy of “decreased distribution” to consciously move the story lower on people’s newsfeeds to reduce its reach.
“I guess it was five or seven days when it was really being decided if it was untrue,” the billionaire remarked. Although Facebook’s distribution was lessened, sharing was still permitted. You may still distribute it. You may still eat it.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has explained how the social media site used an algorithm to bury the Hunter Biden laptop scandal when it originally broke in 2020.
On Thursday’s Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg discussed media control and was questioned by Rogan about how Facebook deals with contentious news stories.
The laptop that Hunter Biden left behind has shown both his hidden porn addiction and his propensity for creating his own homemade sex films.
“So how does that work when you claim the dispersion is decreased?” asked Rogan.
Fewer people saw it than would have otherwise due to a slight drop in ranking in the newsfeed, according to Zuckerberg.
The Facebook CEO said, “I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s substantial,” when asked by what percentage. However, in essence, many others were still able to share it. There were several complaints that this was the situation.
We weren’t quite as categorical about it as Twitter was. We just assumed that the FBI, which is still in my opinion a genuine organization in this nation, was a very skilled law enforcement agency. They approach us and alert us to the fact that we must exercise caution. Then I want to consider it carefully,” stated Zuckerberg.
Did they clearly state that you should be cautious about that story? Rogan enquired.
Zuckerberg said, “I don’t recall whether it was that explicitly, but it roughly matched the pattern.”
But Rogan persisted, asking what happened when the news was suppressed even though it turned out to be true.
The president’s adult son was seen in naked, pornographic, and drug-related photographs and videos on Hunter’s laptop, among other compromising and X-rated materials.
Although Hunter Biden has not been charged with a crime, authorities have been investigating into possible contraventions of federal tax and firearms regulations.
How Zuckerberg unmasked a bombshell Facebook hid Story of Hunter Biden
Rogan:
How do you guys handle news stories that are contentious and get a lot of attention, like the Hunter Biden laptop story that received a lot of attention on Twitter during the election. So you guys also censored that?
Zuckerberg: As a result, we chose a different route from Twitter. The FBI, I believe, essentially approached several members of our team and said, “Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We believed that Russian propaganda permeated the 2016 election heavily. We’ve been put on notice that there will likely be a similar type of dump soon. Thus, use caution. Consequently, our protocol differs from Twitter’s. Twitter acted by stating that you are not permitted to share this at all. That is not what we did. We also employ this third-party fact-checking tool whenever anything is reported to us as possibly, disinformation, or critical misinformation since we don’t want to be the ones to decide what is true and untrue. When it was essentially being decided if it was untrue, I believe it was either five or seven days. Although Facebook’s distribution was lessened, sharing was still permitted. You may still distribute it. You may still eat it.
Rogan: What does it mean, therefore, when you state that the distribution has decreased?
Zuckerberg: Fewer people saw it than they would have because of the ranking in the newsfeed being a little lower.
By what proportion, Rogan?
Zuckerberg: It’s significant, but I’m not sure off the top of my head. However, in essence, many others were still able to share it. There were several complaints that this was the situation. Obviously, this is a very political matter, so depending on your political stance, you may feel that we either restricted it too much or not enough. However, we weren’t quite as binary about it as Twitter. We just assumed that the FBI, which is still in my opinion a genuine organization in this nation, was a very skilled law enforcement agency. They approach us and alert us to the fact that we must exercise caution. I want to consider it carefully, then.
Rogan: Did they clearly state that you should use caution about that story?
Zuckerberg: I don’t recall whether it was that exact, but it seemed to follow the general pattern.
Rogan: Is there remorse for not distributing it widely and for limiting the spread of that tale when something like that turns out to be true?
What do you mean equitably dispersed, Zuckerberg?
Rogan: I say evenly in the sense that it is not muffled.
Zuckerberg: Oh, absolutely. It’s awful how it ended out in retrospect, I mean. After the fact-checkers looked at it, nobody was able to refute it, correct? In essence, it went through a time when it received less circulation. I believe it undoubtedly stinks, but I believe it stinks in the same sense that maybe going through something like a criminal trial, but ultimately being found innocent, stinks. Even if you were ultimately found not guilty, it still stinks that you had to go through a criminal trial. I’m not sure whether the response would have been to do nothing or to have no procedure. The procedure seemed to me to be rather sensible. We still allow sharing, but clearly you don’t want things to go to that point.
‘Yeah. It’s awful how it ended out in retrospect, I mean. After the fact-checkers looked at it, nobody was able to refute it, correct? In essence, it went through a time where it received less dissemination,’ remarked Zuckerberg.
“I think it definitely stinks, but I think in the same sense that perhaps going through something like a criminal trial, but ultimately being found innocent, stinks.” Even if you were found not guilty at the conclusion of the criminal trial, it still stinks, he said.
I’m not sure whether the response would have been to do nothing or to have no procedure. The procedure seemed to me to be rather sensible. We still permit sharing, but clearly you don’t want circumstances like that,’ he said.
More than 50 former top intelligence officers signed a letter at the time the story first surfaced alleging it “had all the traditional earmarks of a Russian information campaign.”
In an effort to divert focus during the interview on Thursday, Zuckerberg reiterated how Twitter had blocked the story’s dissemination and had locked the Post’s account.
Therefore, we chose a different route from Twitter. The FBI essentially came to us and several members of our team and said, “Hey, can we help you? “Hey, just so you know, you need to be really vigilant. We believed that Russian propaganda permeated the 2016 election heavily. We’ve been put on notice that there will likely be a similar type of dump soon. Thus, use caution “‘
According to Zuckerbeg, if anything is alleged to be false information, a third-party fact-checking team evaluates the claim.
So, unlike Twitter, our protocol is distinct. Twitter acted by stating that you are not permitted to share this at all. That’s not what we did,’ Zuckerberg remarked.
We also employ this third party fact-checking tool because we don’t want to be the ones to decide what is real and untrue when something is reported to us as possibly, disinformation, or crucial misinformation, he stated.
In response to the findings, there has been uproar, with many blaming Facebook for purposefully interfering in the election to remove Donald Trump from office.
Georgia’s Andrew Clyde, a Republican representative, declared: “This is not just foolish; it’s electoral tampering.”
“The Oversight Committee must right now request Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony on the FBI’s efforts to violate the First Amendment, under oath.
“The American people want explanations and responsibility.”
As a result, the FBI forewarned Facebook against reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, according to Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican.
In the guise of the Steele dossier, this same agency successfully masked Russian disinformation during the 2016 election. later on lying to a judge to get wiretaps.
In 2019, Hunter left his laptop alone at a computer shop in Delaware.
After turning over the original hard drive to the FBI the year before, the store’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, provided Rudy Giuliani a duplicate of it in September 2020.
Giuliani sent a complete copy of the drive to Bannon and his podcast co-host Maxey in addition to leaking papers and images from the disk to the New York Post.
Ahead of the 2020 election, The New York Post released extracts of emails and images from the laptop, but they were widely criticized as fraudulent or “Russian misinformation” without supporting documentation.
The FBI agents who said that bad headlines about the president’s son were “Russian misinformation” are now being questioned by two Republican senators who initiated an investigation into Hunter’s business operations.
Concerns over the FBI’s “politicization” under Christopher Wray
Since taking over as FBI director in 2017, Christopher Wray has been under fire from Republicans.
This month, the spy chief conducted an extraordinary search that included the contentious raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Threats against FBI employees and locations around the nation increased as a result of the action.
Republicans have even demanded that the FBI be defunded for pursuing the former president.
Wray has also come under fire for how he handled the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
His spies warned social media sites to be on the lookout for false material coming from Russia, which caused the original article to be censored.
Hunter’s following probe has also drawn criticism.
Regarding allegations made by a whistleblower that the FBI concealed damaging evidence against Hunter Biden, Senator Ron Johnson charged the agency with serious prejudice.
The Republican from Wisconsin said that he had “no trust” in Wray, who was chosen by Donald Trump to supervise all matters involving President Joe Biden’s son.
The two FBI agents who briefed Congress on Russian misinformation are being asked by Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to appear once again in September explain the reason for the briefing.
It was “unnecessary and was only done due of pressure from our Democratic colleagues, especially Democratic leadership to falsely portray our Biden probe as furthering Russian misinformation,” they write in a memo to the agents they delivered on Thursday.
Simply stated, they said that the unneeded FBI briefing gave Democrats and the left media the means to disseminate the myth that their efforts had helped Russian misinformation.
Nikki Floris, the intelligence analyst in charge of the Washington Field Office’s intelligence division, and Bradley Benavides, deputy assistant director of the Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence Division, are identified in the letter obtained by the Washington Examiner as the FBI officials who delivered the briefing on August 6, 2020.
Floris and Benavides attempted to reassure the senators, as they state in the letter, that “the FBI didn’t aim to “interfere” in the inquiry.”
The practical impact of such a pointless briefing and the following disclosures about it, they said, “caused interference, which impeded and hampered Congressional oversight operations.”
The two senators continued by claiming they had frequently voiced their concerns to FBI Director Christopher Wray on the briefing but that they had been disregarded.
The senators later noted that they discovered the briefing “consisted largely of material that we previously knew and information unrelated to our Biden inquiry” after attending it.
At the briefing, Grassley and Johnson “made plain to you that it was not germane to the content of our work,” they continued.
They said, “We also made explicit our fear that the briefing would be open to a leak that would cast a misleading light on the focus of our inquiry,” citing a Washington Post article from the time as evidence that their worries were justified.
According to a letter the two senators sent to the agents, the briefing was given on August 6, 2020 by Bradley Benavides, the deputy assistant director of the Washington Field Office’s counterintelligence division, and Nikki Floris, the intelligence analyst in charge of the division’s intelligence.
Additionally, the senators emphasized that they had repeatedly asked for “relevant documents pertaining to what occurred during the briefing… the intelligence justification for the briefing and the persons involved in making the decision to inform us.”
However, they said that the FBI has “consistently failed to answer in full to each request and has failed to produce these essential materials, which further raises questions about the real intent of the briefing.”
However, as Grassley and Johnson write, the opportunity has now arisen for the FBI agents to provide testimony on the meeting’s purpose.
“Whistleblowers have recently alleged that FBI officials initiated a scheme to downplay negative information on Hunter Biden in August 2020, the same month you provided the briefing to us,” they write. “This was done in order to stop investigative activity relating to his potential criminal exposure by labeling it disinformation.”
Whistleblowers claim that local FBI leadership told staff members not to examine the Hunter Biden laptop very after once the FBI received it.
The accusations reaffirm Johnson’s earlier assertions that insiders had told him local FBI leadership had instructed staff members to refrain from looking into Hunter Biden’s laptop and that the FBI “is not going to affect the result of the election again.”
Additionally, he said that a fresh whistleblower had disclosed that “the FBI did not begin to study the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election—potentially a year after the FBI acquired the laptop in December 2019.”
