‘Blood on your hands’: A look back at Mark Zuckerberg’s tense moments in congressional hearings

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta The newly unveiled free speech policies signal a major shift in social media platform Facebook’s content moderation strategy, after years of confrontations in Congress over alleged “censorship” and regulation of political information.

“We will return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.” Zuckerberg said in a video published Tuesday morning. “More specifically, getting rid of fact-checkers and replacing them with X-like Community Notes, starting in the US.”

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Zuckerberg’s shift in content moderation comes amid a history of being criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle. on Capitol Hill.

In January 2024, Senator Josh Hawley, R-R, confronted Zuckerberg during a heated exchange about the harmful impact of social media on users, especially girls. The questioning followed revelations from internal Meta studies that a significant number of teenage girls were exposed to harmful content, including unwanted nudity, sexual advances and material promoting self-harm, in just one week.

“So you didn’t take any action, you didn’t fire anyone, you didn’t compensate any victims. Let me ask you this. There are families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Do you want to apologize now?” Hawley said, to applause from the audience.

In response, Zuckerberg rose from his seat and addressed the crowd directly, saying, “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. No one should have to go through the things your families went through.”

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Zuckerberg added, “That’s why we’ve invested so much … and we’ll continue our industry-leading efforts to make sure no one (anyone) has to go through what your families have had to go through.”

In this same hearing, Senator Lindsey GrahamRSC, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a scathing rebuke of the tech giant’s CEO.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know you don’t mean it that way, but you have blood on your hands,” Graham said. “You have a product that is killing people.”

Graham’s comment came to light from South Carolina state representative Brandon Guffey suing Instagram followers the suicide of his 17-year-old son, Gavin. Gavin took his own life after falling victim to an extortion scheme run by a group operating through the Meta-owned app.

In 2018, then-House lawmakers criticized Zuckerberg for the site’s lack of safeguards to protect the personal information of 87 million users. Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 from his Harvard dorm room, said in a Facebook post at the time: “Looking back, it’s clear that we identified election interference in 2016 too slowly, and we need to do better at future elections.”

In November 2020, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg clashed the Judicial Committee of the Senate in a hearing titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression and the 2020 Election.” The session focused on the tech giants’ controversial content moderation decisions, including the deletion of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden just weeks before the presidential election.

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Testifying remotely, both CEOs acknowledged the missteps and described how they would tackle similar challenges in the future. Zuckerberg highlighted Facebook’s expansive voting initiatives, which he called “the largest voting information campaign in American history.” According to his testimony, more than 140 million users visited the Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, and 33 million accessed it on Election Day alone. The campaign reportedly helped 4.5 million people register to vote.

To combat disinformation and voter suppression, Zuckerberg detailed measures such as partnerships with election officials, the removal of false statements and warnings applied to more than 150 million pieces of content reviewed by independent fact-checkers. Facebook also implemented “policies that prohibit explicit or implicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote, as well as attempts to use threats related to to the COVID-19 to scare people into not voting,” according to Zuckerberg’s testimony.

Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was launched after the 2016 election and had been used to “manage content” and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure “, the executives said, but admitted that the system is “also gone”. away”.

Last year, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, in which he admitted that he felt pressure from the Biden administration, especially around the content of COVID-19, and even topics like satire and humor.

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“The fact is that, as American companies, when other governments around the world do not have our tradition or our first amendmentwhen they see the US government pressuring US companies to take down content, it’s open season for those governments to put more pressure (on their companies),” explained Meta’s head of global affairs, Joel Kaplan. “We think so. it’s a real opportunity to work with the Trump administration and work on free speech at home.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Liz Huston, spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition, said: “President Trump always has he was a champion of free speech, and his landslide victory ended the Biden era of oppressive censorship.”

“President Trump’s return to the White House is a signal to Americans that their fundamental right to free speech is safe again,” he added.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Adonis Hoffman contributed to this report.