How American Security Manipulates Media to Achieve Its Goals?

Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed during Joe Rogan's show that the FBI called him during the presidential elections in 2020 and insistently asked him not to promote on his social platforms the story of Hunter Biden's laptop, the son of Joe Biden, and not to touch on the very ugly contents of this device's hard disks.

US intelligence could convince Zuckerberg that all rumors about this issue are nothing but fake Russian-sourced information and indicate Moscow's interference in the US elections.

Mark said during the show that Facebook restriction of the story was based on FBI misinformation warnings.

 

Controlling American Social Media

Russia's foreign ministry said US security agencies, including the FBI, are secretly controlling American social media giants. The ministry's claims came after Mark Zuckerberg's recent interview during the hugely popular Joe Rogan podcast, in which the Facebook CEO asserted such influence.

Spokesperson Maria Zakharova published, on Friday, August 26, a post telegram saying how FBI operatives had visited Zuckerberg ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections, asking him to cover up stories about the "unseemly contents" of the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop on his platforms.

"The men in black 'convinced' Mark Zuckerberg…that these were all Russian fakes," Zakharova said.

Mark Zuckerberg stated that Facebook restricted a laptop story about the son of the American president, Hunter Biden, during the 2020 election after FBI insistence.

Leaked emails from the son's laptop showed the then vice-president was helping his son's business dealings in Ukraine, according to the New York Post.

In addition to Facebook, Twitter also restricted sharing of the article before Mark's confessions amid allegations of censorship. Facebook CEO said that getting the decision wrong "sucks."

"When we take down something that we're not supposed to, that's the worst."

When he was asked if he regretted covering up the factual story, he replied: "It sucks... I think in the same way that having to go through a criminal trial but being proven innocent in the end sucks…in the end, you're free."

NYP released the story a few weeks before the presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

 

Media Decisive Role

Abandoned in a repair shop, the laptop of Joe Biden's son included emails showing Hunter introducing a Ukrainian energy millionaire to his father in order to fix a meeting.

The long-running unproven allegations about Biden's corruption in ensuring his son's business success in Ukraine were confirmed by these emails.

The New York Post leak was exclusive, and no other news agency had access to do so, but it was met with skepticism and censored by social media outlets.

Zuckerberg told Rogan: "The background here is that the FBI came to us—some folks on our team—and was like 'hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election; we have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that."

The laptop hard drive was handed over to the Washington Post by Donald Trump's lawyer.

A year later, the newspaper conducted its own analysis to conclude that the emails "were likely to be authentic."

Other news organizations once doubted the story, agreed at least that some of the emails were true, like the New York Times.

Not only the FBI, Rogan himself has been accused of spreading misinformation in the past; through his podcast, one of the most famous in the world.

Zuckerberg described the story as a "hyper-political issue," and he knew there remained disagreement about it.

"Depending on what side of the political spectrum [you're on], you either think we didn't censor it enough or we censored it way too much."

In fact, Facebook did not ban the sharing of the article completely, it rather restricted how much its algorithm automatically shared it with new people, while Twitter did not allow the article to be shared at all.

Accordingly, the two companies were found under American security pressure on one hand and US Republicans' anger on the other.

 

FBI Responds

The day after Mark Zuckerberg's statements during Joe Rogan's show, the federal agency said that the FBI can only alert a private entity of a potential threat, not ask it to take action.

The agency also said, through a statement released to FOX Business, that it has provided companies with "foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors."

"The FBI will continue to work closely with federal, state, local, and private sector partners to keep the public informed of potential threats, but the FBI cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received," the agency said.

"The FBI will continue to work closely with federal, state, local, and private sector partners to keep the public informed of potential threats, but the FBI cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received."

The FBI insisted on Friday night that it has provided companies with "foreign threat indicators" to help protect their platforms and customers but that it "cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received."

"The FBI routinely notifies US private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information so that they can decide how to better defend against threats," the agency said.

In the meantime, Meta responded to the FBI statement via Twitter, saying: "The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference—nothing specific about Hunter Biden," the statement said.