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

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

“We will return to our roots and focus on reducing errors, simplifying our rules and restoring freedom of expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in the video published on Tuesday morning. “Specifically, we’ll get rid of fact-checking tools and replace them with X-like Community Notes, starting in the US”

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Zuckerberg’s turn to moderate content comes amid a history of criticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

In January 2024, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., confronted Zuckerberg during a heated debate about the harmful effects of social media on users, especially young women. The investigation follows revelations from internal Meta studies that showed a significant number of teenage girls were exposed to harmful content, including unwanted nudity, sexual assault and material promoting self-harm, within just one week.

“So you didn’t do anything, you didn’t fire anyone, you didn’t compensate any of the victims. Let me ask you this. The families of the victims are here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to apologize now?” – said Hawley to applause from the audience.

In response, Zuckerberg rose from his seat and directly addressed the crowd, saying, “I’m sorry for what you’ve all been through. No one should have to go through what your families have gone 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 that [one has] go through what your families have had to go through.”

At that same hearing, Senator Lindsey GrahamRS.C., a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a scathing rebuke to the tech giant’s CEO.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know you don’t think so, but you have bloody hands,” Graham said. “You have a product that kills people.”

Graham’s remarks came in light of South Carolina Rep. Brandon Guffey sue Instagram follow 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 an app owned by Meta.

In 2018, members of the House of Representatives at the time condemned Zuckerberg for the site’s failure to protect the personal data of 87 million users. Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 from his dorm room at Harvard, said in a Facebook post at the time: “Looking back, it’s clear that we were too slow to recognize the interference in the 2016 election, and we must do better in future elections.” . “

In November 2020, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg faced off of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary at a hearing titled “Breaking News: Censorship, Suppression and the 2020 Election.” The session put the spotlight on the tech giants’ controversial content moderation decisions, including covering up a New York Post story about Hunter Biden just weeks before the presidential election.

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Testifying remotely, both CEOs acknowledged missteps and described how they would handle 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 Voter 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 misinformation and voter suppression, Zuckerberg detailed measures such as partnering with election officials, removing false claims 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 and when to vote, as well as attempts to use threats related to on COVID-19 scare people into not voting,” according to Zuckerberg’s testimony.

Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was introduced after the 2016 election and has been used to “manage content” and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to “political pressure,” executives said, but acknowledged that the system “has gone too far.”

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

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“The thing is that as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our first amendmentwhen they see the United States government pressuring American companies to remove content, it’s just open season for those governments to apply more pressure [on their companies]” explained Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan. “We think it’s a real opportunity to work with the Trump administration and to work on free expression at home.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Liz Huston, spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition, said, “President Trump always is was a champion of free speech, and his landslide victory put an end to 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,” she added.

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