Remember when you were a little kid and you got caught by your parents doing something you were told not to do? Sneaking a cookie or two before dinner, slipping out the back door to play when you were supposed to be doing your homework, and stuff like that?
Then, when you got caught, and presumably yelled at, you apologized profusely, right? Boy, howdy — you were really sorry, weren't you? But if you were like me, you were really sorry you got caught — not for what you did.
Enter, Mark Zuckerberg — and his latest episode of "getting caught."
As my RedState colleague Susie Moore reported earlier on Wednesday:
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, the parent company that owns Facebook, sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, on Monday acknowledging that Meta censored Americans at the behest of the Biden-Harris administration and throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
While that was a remarkable admission from Zuckerberg, it was hardly a shock, given his history of manipulating Facebook's algorithm to suppress conservative content.
So Back to the Little Kid Sneaking a Cookie
Call me skeptical (make that "wise," knowing Zuck's past), but I don't believe for a minute that Zuckerberg "regrets" caving to pressure from the Biden-Harris administration to censor the Hunter laptop scandal. The mayor of Zuckerville simply has too much past baggage in this area to come across as anywhere near credible, now.
George Washington University Law School professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley agrees. In a Tuesday column for Fox News, Turley tore Zuckerberg's feigned contriteness to shreds. He began with a quote from Zuck's letter.
I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.
Contrite? Or contrived? Turley believes the latter — and I suspect you do, too.
For those of us who have criticized Facebook for years for its role in the massive censorship system, Zuckerberg's belated contrition was more insulting than inspiring. It had all of the genuine regret as a stalker found hiding under the bed of a victim.
Zuckerberg's sudden regret only came after his company fought for years to conceal the evidence of its work with the government to censor opposing views. Zuckerberg was finally compelled to release the documents by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the House Judiciary Committee.
As a conservative writer who's posted content to Facebook for something like 15 years, I've seen Zuck's playground grow bolder and more blatant in its censorship, often bordering on ridiculousness. Censoring satire comes to mind, or posts containing direct quotes from the left. The list goes on — and it's no longer surprising.
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Turley recounted prior testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and other congressional committees in which he noted that Zuckerberg continued to refuse to release information after Elon Musk exposed his (Zuck's) system in his (Musk's) release of the "Twitter Files."
Turley wrote in his Tuesday column:
Zuckerberg stayed silent as Musk was viciously attacked by anti-free speech figures in Congress and the media. He was fully aware of his own company's similar conduct but stayed silent.
When the White House and President Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, Facebook continued to withhold evidence that they too were pressured to suppress the story before the election.
When the censorship system was recently put before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri and the justices asked about evidence of coordination and pressure from the government. In Murthy, states successfully showed lower courts that there was coercion from the government in securing an injunction.
The Biden administration denied such pressure and the Court rejected the standing of plaintiffs, blocked an order to stop the censorship, and sent the case back down to the lower court.
Zuckerberg still remained silent.
Yet, we're now to believe that Zuck "regrets" succumbing to Biden-Harris administration pressure to censor? Please. Sorry, dude, your letter to Jordan was a complete crock of crap.
As Turley put it:
Facebook was not silent when it came to censorship, or "content moderation" as the company prefers to call it. While Zuckerberg now expresses "regret" at not speaking out sooner, his company previously sought to sell Americans on censorship.
And if you (third person) believe that the suddenly "contrite" mayor of Zuckerville is now going to stop censoring or suppressing conservative content, and content detrimental to left, I have an awesome bridge to sell you.
The Bottom Line
The very notion that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta now want us to believe that they only censored content potentially harmful to the Biden-Harris administration because they were "pressured," and now truly regret censoring opposing views, is beyond supercilious. It is beyond dishonest.
Zuckerberg's contrived "regret" is nothing less than an arrogant slap in the face of decent Americans who expect more.
But to expect more from Facebook and parent company Meta has proved to be a fool's game.
