zuckerberg says he will remain neutral and will no longer donate to local governments in the united states to manage elections
2024-08-29
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zuckerberg visual china image
in order to remain politically neutral, zuckerberg announced that he would no longer donate to support the management of us elections.
on august 26th local time, mark zuckerburg, ceo of meta, the parent company of social platform facebook, expressed his dissatisfaction with the us government's review of content on online platforms in a letter to jim jordan, chairman of the house judiciary committee of the u.s. congress, and stated that he would remain politically neutral in the 2024 u.s. election and stop donating to help local governments manage elections.
an official account named "house judiciary republicans (house judiciary gop)" has posted a full screenshot of the open letter on major social platforms in the united states, calling it a "huge victory for freedom of speech."
zuckerberg's statement has attracted much attention during the us election. during the 2020 election, zuckerberg and his wife priscilla chan donated more than $400 million to non-profit organizations to help local governments in the united states manage elections during the epidemic.
according to foreign media reports, this part of the funds helped many local governments complete tasks such as registering voters, building polling stations, and sorting and mailing ballots. however, because zuckerberg was very close to the democratic party at the time, many republican members complained about his move, calling his donations "zuckerbucks" and believing that it was an unfair subsidy to the democratic party.
in this letter, zuckerberg said that the purpose of his donation at the time was to "ensure that local election jurisdictions across the country have the resources they need to help people vote safely during the covid-19 pandemic." zuckerberg said he did not think the donation would benefit one party, but he knew some people would think so: "my goal is to remain neutral and not play a role in some way, or just appear to play a role. so i don't plan to make similar donations during this election cycle."
zuckerberg also talked about meta's content review in the letter, saying that in 2021, the biden administration pressured the company's social platform facebook to delete content related to the covid-19 pandemic, including some humorous and sarcastic posts. when facebook refused, government officials "expressed strong dissatisfaction." he wrote: "i strongly believe that we should not sacrifice our content standards because of pressure from any government - if this happens again, we are ready to fight back."
in addition to enhanced review of covid-19-related content at government request, the letter also mentioned that facebook was asked to block reports about the laptop of biden's son hunter biden in 2020, and now zuckerberg calls it "a wrong decision."
there is no doubt that zuckerberg's statement will put some pressure on the biden administration and the democratic party. it is worth mentioning that shortly before this letter was made public, the relationship between zuckerberg and us republican presidential candidate trump seemed to have changed dramatically.
in june 2020, zuckerberg publicly stated that he was "deeply shocked and disgusted by president trump's divisive and inflammatory remarks." in 2021, after the capitol hill riots, almost all of trump's social accounts were banned, including on meta's facebook and instagram platforms.
on july 10 this year, trump once again brought up the "zuckcoin" incident on his social platform "truth social" and directly blasted zuckerberg: "i can only say that if i am elected president, we will hunt down election fraudsters with unprecedented intensity. they will be sent to jail and imprisoned for a long time." two days later, on july 12, meta announced that it would fully lift restrictions on trump's facebook and instagram social accounts.
on the 26th, meta (nasdaq: meta) stock price closed at us$521.12 per share, down 1.3%, with a total market value of us$1.32 trillion.
hu hanyan, reporter of the paper
(this article is from the paper. for more original information, please download the "the paper" app)
