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Brandon Silverman

@brandonsilverman.bsky.social
1.5K followers 191 following 119 posts

working on something new. former ceo & co-founder of crowdtangle, policy advocate for open internet & transparency, 3x boy-dad, less frequent dog walker.

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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research @thecoalition.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
CITR just submitted a request to intervene on behalf of technology researchers in the X v. European Commission case to explain the importance of the DSA’s data access rules to the CJEU. (⅓) independenttechresearch.org/citr-members...
independenttechresearch.org
CITR Members Intervene in DSA Court Case to uphold Data Access for Public Interest Research - Coalition for Independent Technology Research
Members of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research today requested leave to intervene in X v. European Commission. X’s Digital Services Act violations have prevented researchers from using p...
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Claude Code is so fun. Two random projects I did over the weekend: What do Super Bowl ads tell us about the economy: brandonsilverman77.github.io/superbowlads/ What values do we sing about during half-time? brandonsilverman77.github.io/halftime/ Spoiler alert: Bad Bunny was great.
brandonsilverman77.github.io
Super Bowl Ad Economy
What Super Bowl commercials tell us about the U.S. economy — from the Dot-Com Bubble to the AI Boom.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
A few years ago I tried to build the RSS reader I always wanted: author-based and delivered over email. RSS was ultimately too unwieldy to make it super feasible...but LLMs have offically solved that. So, here's the newly revamped and souped up version! www.joinbyline.com
joinbyline.com
Byline - Follow the writers you love
Track your favorite journalists across every publication. One daily email with all their latest stories.
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
My second post about researchers’ rights to scrape data under DSA Article 40.12 is up! This is dense with legal arguments for researchers to use if they get sued. Or to show their lawyers before that. www.techpolicy.press/how-the-mean... verfassungsblog.de/dsa-fine-x-r...
techpolicy.press
How the Meaning of 'Publicly Accessible' Shapes Researcher Data Rights Under the DSA | TechPolicy.Press
Researchers eager to begin work under DSA Article 40(12) may be deterred by uncertainty about what data counts as 'publicly accessible,' writes Daphne Keller.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Leaving this here...
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
👇👇👇👇
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
EU has fined X $140m for breaking European laws and refusing to address that when warned. Likely Musk won't pay and the Trump regime will pressure EU, but if so, they should stand strong and ban the website. And oh the irony that this won't cover the UK, where Musk is stoking division and violence.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
If you include the earlier Reuters deal, then 50% of the sourcing of U.S. news-related AI answers for Meta chatbots will come from outlets ostensibly trying to serve a broad, diverse national audience...and the other 50% come from explicitly, self-defining conservative outlets. Good times.
axios.com
Exclusive: Meta strikes multiple AI deals with news publishers
Meta's new partners include USA Today, People Inc., CNN, Fox News, The Daily Caller, Washington Examiner and Le Monde.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
This is basically Shattered Glass but for academia? All the way down to creating fake company websites...https://www.wsj.com/economy/aidan-toner-rodgers-mit-ai-research-78753243?st=NGTDig&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Just finished Brother's Karamazov for the first time. As Dostoevsky is to Tolstoy, Tolkien is to G.R.R. Martin?
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
gwiddp.bsky.social @gwiddp.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
NEW REPORT 💻 @annalenhart.bsky.social and @brandonsilverman.bsky.social interviewed 18 high-profile social media figures about how they view privacy. Many policymakers assume that public data from prominent accounts involve lower expectations of privacy. Is that the case? Read here: bit.ly/4peorZB.
iddp.gwu.edu
Performing in Autonomy Theater | Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics (IDDP) | Columbian College of Arts & Sciences | The George Washington University
Balancing the needs of social media researchers with perspectives of high profile figures.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
We live in a two-tiered system—where corporations & brands buy access to the data they need and public interest researchers are locked out. One customer representative candidly admitted: "Even when they added more restrictions on Facebook, we found a way to get more data."
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Needless to say, strongly agree with @ebakerwhite.bsky.social in this op-ed in the Times this morning! www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Legislators Should Force Social Media Platforms to Tell the Truth
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
This new report from @brandonsilverman.bsky.social and @naomishiffman.bsky.social is great. It documents numerous concrete cases in which platform transparency (or scraping-based research) has had significant real-world impact. iddp.gwu.edu/sites/g/file...
iddp.gwu.edu
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Anyone know what video was actually played?
axios.com
Trump leans into widely disputed claims about "white genocide" in S. Africa
Trump played a controversial video to emphasize his claims about white Afrikaners facing racial violence.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Unsubscribe from campaign text messaging is obviously broken. We need a mechanism for more upstream unsubscribes...campaigns should have to tell you *where* they got your number and you should be able to remove yourself from the source list.
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
The worst happened. We were DOGE’d. Our NSF funding is gone. So now there’s nothing stopping me from sharing Expert Voices Together, a crisis response system for US-based researchers and journalists facing harassment. It's a true passion project. 🧵 1/ expertvoicestogether.org
expertvoicestogether.org
© 2025 Expert Voices Together
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
My useless contribution to the Qatar plane news cycle is that people are severely underestimating the economics of private jet ownership.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
This morning, @naomishiffman.bsky.social and I published a report that helps make the case for why online platform transparency is so important by looking at *specific, concrete case studies* where data sharing led to real-world impact. Link to the report and 🧵 with more details below!
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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 23/04/2025
Looks like we finally found the censorship industrial complex. I'm sure the Twitter Files conspiracy theorists will be all over it any day now. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
They Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed.
Three users who disagreed with the site’s owner saw views for their posts plummet.
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patcurley.bsky.social @patcurley.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Just submitted my first suggestion. Super easy process and such a useful tracker.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Thanks for the bump @mmasnick.bsky.social! And whole thing started with a BlueSky post from @moskov.goodventures.org. Have had a ton of user submissions and just need to go through and approve them all now...
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A half-clever Tapir @amelia.codes · 22/04/2025
This site gets an A+ in design. It's simple, but effective. It's fast. The background isn't blindingly white. There is still strong contrast between the text and background. It looks good on desktop AND mobile.
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Nearly half of people currently detained by ICE/CBP have no criminal charges, yet some are being held in conditions that would be unacceptable in high-security prisons. Admin has eliminated oversight bodies ensured health/safety requirements are met www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
washingtonpost.com
Immigrants forced to sleep on floors at overwhelmed ICE detention centers
Some immigrant detention centers across the country are over capacity. The administration has asked for emergency contracts to add more facilities.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
General purpose decision making tree for my 10 year-old:
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
New from me: an essay on the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and its remarkable 30 year history of witch hunts & blacklists. It chronicles the progression of how industries & academia went from capitulation to defiance,& what we can take from that today www.lawfaremedia.org/article/proc...
Process as Punishment: An American History of Political
Spectacle
Renee DiResta
Monday, April 14, 2025, 12:00 PM

American political theater isn't new.
The House Un-American Activities Committee operated for decades— until targets learned to fight back.
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Sarah Longwell @sarahlongwell25.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Oh. "This is about whether we have functional constitutional government in this country. If the IRS can go after you because of what you think or what you believe or what you do, we'd no longer live in a free country.“
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Kevin Bankston @bankston.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
I’m profoundly disappointed that the only bias Meta apparently tested for in Llama 4 was *ideological* bias so no one will call them woke. Seems political appeasement is more important at Meta than preventing actual race & gender discrimination in their AI’s decisionmaking.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
When someone writes the book on Facebook and their role in news & politics over the decades, the last four words of this announcement should be the title. It perfectly captures the complete total capitulation to their bad faith critics.
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Tim Karr @timkarr.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
So much for the so-called "Censorship Industrial Complex" that fuels so much of the white right's victimhood complex, and led to countless hearings in the GOP-controlled Congress. Data scientists say differently. c/o @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/scientists-r...
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
This is one of the those times when I can so vividly see myself three years in the future, looking backwards and thinking "I have some vague memory of a journalist being added to a highly sensitive group chat but honestly, it just paled in comparison to so much that came after..."
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Excellent statement from Nature’s editorial board. The last section on “How to respond” is the most important. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere
US President Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to science and to international institutions. The global research community must take a stand against these attacks.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
A Mike Pesca line for the ages: “Donald Trump's big speech perfectly showcased a quintessential Trump's quality: imperviousness to fact-checking. The man doesn't just dodge accountability; he breakdances on its grave while firing merch out of a t-shirt cannon.”
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
What a joke
nytimes.com
DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week
The cuts, highlighted on an earlier version of the “wall of receipts” posted by Elon Musk’s team, contained mistakes that vastly inflated the amount of money saved.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
So disappointed in Martin Gurri's interview with Ezra Klein. Revolt of the Public was one of the best books about the internet that I've read and I've been so curious about why he turned into Trump supporter. Turns out his explanation is just a litany of incoherent, political grievances.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Massive fan of this project and very bull-ish on the huge impact its going to have over the long-run...congrats on the launch to everyone involved! @camillefrancois.bsky.social @elisugarman.bsky.social @dwillner.bsky.social @julietshen.bsky.social and a lot more...
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Jim Jordan’s claims about platform content moderation in Europe under the #DSA are fact checked and turn out to be ... false. edmo.eu/publications...
edmo.eu
US House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s statement about DSA requiring platforms to systematically remove legal content is false – EDMO
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Raphael Satter @raphae.li · 07/02/2025
New: A 2nd DOGE staffer has amplified extremists online, including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate www.reuters.com/world/us/sta...
reuters.com
Staffer with Elon Musk's DOGE amplified white supremacists online
One of the people working with billionaire Elon Musk in his efforts to overhaul the U.S. government is a Berkeley-educated computer scientist who has boosted white supremacists and misogynists online.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Any European lawyers out there? How big of a deal is this because it seems like a big deal: democracy-reporting.org/en/office/EU...
democracy-reporting.org
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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
They just invented fact checks.
Elon Musk reposted
Miranda Devine & @mirandad... • Jan 29 X ...
Love this: the White House is now issuing press releases "Debunking Latest Fake News
Hoaxes".
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Tomorrow's the RFK Jr hearing. I hope to see the hearing room papered with two sets of poster-sized images: Kennedy's insane-crank Instagram circa early 2020, and pictures of kids with vaccine-preventable diseases. If they're going to confirm him, make it clear to the public what we're getting.
<
45.17
ROBERTFKENNEDYJR
Posts
424%
Follow
32.72
Latest data show that COVID virus naturally runs its course in 7-8 weeks regardless of public health measures.
We destroyed the global economy from bad advice.
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I.SC
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robertfkennedyjr WHO's most recent global COVID-19 data suggest that virus naturally runs its course in 7-8 weeks regardless of public health measures.The study, published today in a note in the distinguished medical journal Toxicology, concludes that the global lockdown strategies have had nothing to do with the disappearance of COVID. Careful analysis shows that the contagion had already peaked prior to implementation of Quarantine measures. Wishful thinking by influential individuals who saw personal advantages from a catastrophic pandemic,bad judgement by public health officials and political leaders and a yellow press ,financed by Pharma, hawking panic and pandemic porn precipitated the global economic collapse that will bedevil humanity for generations. Let's make sure we hold the scoundrels accountable. Swipe left to read the study.As his words were echoed by people who began to set fire to 5G towers Kennedy complained that platforms were moderating

FACEBOOK AND TWITTER TO CENSOR
NORTH
144)
EXIT
Those with no chip
RIGHT LANE
You Are Now Entering
America
5G CRITICS
24,727 likes
robertfkennedyjr Twitter and Facebook have both announced their intention to censor criticism of 5G
Wireless. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is in a... more View all 1.497 comments|robertfkennedyjr
LITTLE GIRLS WHO GET THE DTP VACCINE ARE 10 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE...
5. Conclusions
EBio Medicine
Research Tuper
The Introduction of Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis and Oral Potio Vaccine
Among Young Infants in an Urban African Community: A Natural Experiment
Seven Wepe Mopensen *", Andreas Andersen*", Amabelia Rodrigues", Christine S Benn*5, Peter Aaby *»
Accepted 29 January 2017
DTP was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvacci nated. No prospective study has shown beneficial survival effects of DTP. Unfortunately, DTP is the most widely used vaccine, and the proportion who receives DTP3 is used globally as an indicator of the performance of national vaccination programs.
It should be of concern that the effect of routine vaccinations on all-cause mortality was not tested in randomized trials. All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from ashae essee san it esse fem dinksharis for snue ne nortueie Thoush
"All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves fromdiphtheria, tetanus or pertussis."
vaccines has indicated that it will not be possible to examine the effect of DTP in an unbiased way. If that decision by IVIR-AC remains unchal-lenged, the present study may remain the closest we will ever come to a RCT of the NSES of DTP.
Vaccinations with the DTP vaccine the first 3-5 months of age was associated with a 10-fold higher mortality rate compared to unvaccinated infants.
10x
Table 3
Mortality rate and hazard rate (HR) for children from 3 months of age until first examination without vaccination or 6 months of age. Natural experiment.
Age group
Mortality rate (deaths/person-years)
H (95X CY
DIP vs unvaccinated
Unvaccinated
(N = 651)
45 (5/1114)
DTP (# OPV) (N = 462)
DTP only (N = 101)
174 (11/63,1)
5.00
-16.3)|
10.0 (261-38.6)
SO WHY ARE BILL GATES AND WHO TRYING TO FORCE IT ON EVERY AFRICAN CHILD?
25,059 likes
robertfkennedyi…robertfkennedyir o
BILL GATES
CLAIRVOYANT?
WE PREDICT "A RAPIDLY SPREADING PANDEMIC DUE TO A LETHAL RESPIRATORY PATHOGEN (WHETHER NATURALLY EMERGENT OR ACCIDENTALLY OR DELIBERATELY RELEASED)"
SEPTEMBER 2019
PREDICTION BY GATES
FUNDED GPMB OF THE WHO
HER
COC
23,668 likes
View all 1,448 comments
2 days ago
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Dave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Early on at Facebook, the nascent Content Policy team organically developed a set of aphorisms to guide our work. A set of simple-ish “north stars” to navigate by, keeping us on track while coping with of the ever growing and diversifying torrent of reports. 🧵1/9
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
The big tell in this interview is that when he gets to the big, shocking moment of what the Biden administration *actually* did that radicalized him so much...his only concrete complaint is about crypto, a produft with no actual PMF and enormous amounts of fraud. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms
Marc Andreessen explains the newest faction of conservatism.
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
The more I think about Mark Zuckerberg’s excuses for complying with Biden administration pressure to remove content, the angrier I get. (It was the media’s fault! Or maybe it was the woke Californians way down the reporting chain. Or was it “feminine energy”?) 1/
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 11/01/2025
I really, really don't want to do this, but let's do a bit (just a LITTLE BIT) of fact checking about what Zuck said on the Joe Rogan podcast, because this is something I not only followed closely, but also spent time *talking to the actual people at Meta who dealt with this* which WAS NOT ZUCK.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Old enough to remember when meta would talk about how study after study showed that diverse teams were more effective.
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
As long as Elon & Trump have a good working relationship, then I think we should assume we're in the "Elon Era" of social media rules...and that every major platform will increasingly adopt X's policies on all contentious issues.
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Reposted by Brandon Silverman
Dave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Folks are mostly missing the forest for the trees re: the recent Meta announcement. Specifically, the focus on the move from fact checking to community notes. There two different changes that are a much bigger deal that have received less focus. 🧵 1/11
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Brandon Silverman @brandonsilverman.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
I know it was almost 4 months ago and that's a long-time but I still remember this zinger: "I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”
cnn.com
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta was ‘pressured’ by Biden administration to censor Covid-related content in 2021 | CNN Business
Zuckerberg in his letter to the judiciary committee said the pressure he felt in 2021 was “wrong” and he came to “regret” that his company was not more outspoken.
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Daphne Keller @daphnek.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
It’s not jawboning when he does it
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