Zuckerberg acknowledged during the interview that this tactic ran the risk of suppressing potentially factual information. That said, the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop is still full of holes two years later.
When the laptop story first leaked just before the 2020 election, information on it was largely suppressed on Twitter due to suspicion surrounding the source of the information less than three weeks out from a presidential election. While some of the data on the laptop is considered legitimate two years later, much of it is still difficult to authenticate to this day due to it changing hands so many times, leaving room for outside interference and misinformation.
However, those facts have not stopped right-wing media from accusing Facebook of directly colluding with the FBI to suppress the story, even though that is not remotely close to Zuckerberg’s admission that Meta somewhat based its guidance on an FBI warning about potential election misinformation.
Accusations have gotten so bad that both Meta and the FBI released statements. Meta clarified that “nothing about the Hunter Biden laptop story is new. … The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference - nothing specific about Hunter Biden.” The FBI’s statement read similarly, stating that the bureau only shared general threat indicators with Meta.
Neither those statements, nor the actual holes in the laptop story, have stopped right-wing media outlets from continuing to baselessly accuse the FBI of coordinating with Facebook to suppress information on Hunter Biden’s laptop, thereby winning the 2020 election for Joe Biden.
