Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said that the FBI informed Facebook about the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. The FBI reacted on Friday.
In an interview with the comedian Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said that the government has warned the social media juggernaut to be on guard against Russian misinformation tactics ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Zuckerberg said that while the FBI did not directly mention the Hunter Biden tale, it “fit the pattern” of what the agency had spoken about.
The FBI said in a statement that it often alerts social media firms to possible security issues.
The FBI has given businesses foreign danger indicators to assist them in safeguarding their platforms and clients from misuse by foreign bad influence actors, according to the press release.
The organization continued by saying they couldn’t “direct or encourage corporations to take action on information received.”
Additionally, it stated: “[The FBI] regularly alerts U.S. private sector firms, including social media providers, of possible threat information so that they may make decisions about how to best fight against attacks,” according to NBC News.
On Thursday’s Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg discussed media control and was questioned by Rogan about how Facebook deals with contentious news stories.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has explained how the social media site used an algorithm to bury the Hunter Biden laptop scandal when it originally broke in 2020.
‘The FBI offered generic cautions about foreign interference-nothing particular about Hunter Biden,’ Meta said in response to the FBI’s announcement on Twitter.
The FBI essentially approached us, certain members of our staff, and said, “Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We believed there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election,” according to Zuckerberg, who made this clear last Thursday.
We are on notice that there will likely be some kind of dump that is comparable, he said. So just be careful.
Zuckerberg expressed sorrow about the choice to bury the news in a conversation with Rogan.
The fact-checkers looked into it, and no one was able to declare it was wrong, he said. It turned out after the fact.
The CEO continued, “Right?” In other words, there was a time when it received less dissemination. The procedure seemed to me to be rather sensible. We still allow people to spread it, you know.
Although Hunter Biden has not been charged with a crime, authorities have been investigating into possible contraventions of federal tax and firearms regulations.
The laptop that Hunter Biden left behind has shown both his hidden porn addiction and his propensity for creating his own homemade sex films.
In the conversation, Rogan questioned Zuckerberg about how Facebook handles contentious news stories and the problem of media censorship.
According to Zuckerberg, the platform did not totally suppress the item as Twitter did, but it was nonetheless moved down users’ newsfeeds for up to a week until further information that would clarify whether the report was accurate or not was released.
The laptop tale “has all the typical earmarks of a Russian information operation,” according to a letter signed at the time by more than 50 former senior intelligence officers.
How a political uproar was sparked by Hunter Biden’s laptop
Hunter abandoned the laptop at Jon Paul Mac Isaac’s shop in 2019 and never came back to get it.
After giving it to the FBI, he handed it over, and eight months later, in September 2020, Mac Isaac delivered Rudy Giuliani, the attorney for Donald Trump, a copy of the hard drive.
Giuliani allegedly subsequently delivered a copy of the drive to Trump adviser Steve Bannon and his podcast co-host Jack Maxey in addition to leaking papers and images from the disk to the New York Post.
Three weeks before the election, on October 14, the New York Post broke the bombshell regarding a purported meeting between Joe Biden and a Ukrainian billionaire that was discovered in Hunter’s emails.
More publications concerning Hunter’s drug and sex life as well as his connection with China surfaced.
The article and its source were questioned by mainstream media outlets, and many speculated that it may have been a product of Putin’s disinformation operation to sway the election.
However, the New York Post has seen proof of an FBI demand for the hard drive and computer’s seizure that was dated from December 2019.
The New York Times and other major news organizations did not validate the laptop and its contents until March 2021, although DailyMail.com had already done so.
In an effort to divert attention, Zuckerberg reiterated how Twitter had blocked the story’s dissemination and had locked the Post’s account.
Therefore, we chose a different route from Twitter. The FBI essentially came to us and several members of our staff and said, “Hey, can we help you? “Hey, just so you know, you should probably be really vigilant. In the 2016 election, there was a lot of what we believed to be Russian propaganda. We are aware that there will likely be some kind of dump of, or anything like. So just be alert.”‘
So, unlike Twitter, our protocol is distinct. Twitter acted by stating that you are not permitted to share this at all. That’s not what we did,’ Zuckerberg remarked. We also employ this third party fact-checking tool because we don’t want to be the ones to decide what is real and untrue when something is reported to us as possibly, disinformation, or crucial misinformation, he stated.
I believe it took around five to seven days to ascertain if it was true or not. Although Facebook’s distribution was lessened, sharing was still permitted. You may still distribute it. You may still eat it, he advised.
When questioned what he meant by “decreased dissemination,” Zuckerberg said that he meant that the article will appear further down on people’s newsfeeds.
Rogan questioned the proportion of the distribution’s decline.
He said, “I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s significant.” However, in general, many individuals were still able to share it. There were several complaints that this was the situation.
We weren’t quite as categorical about it as Twitter was. We just assumed that the FBI, which is still in my opinion a genuine organization in this nation, was a very skilled law enforcement agency. They approach us and alert us to the fact that we must exercise caution. Then I want to consider it carefully,” stated Zuckerberg.
Did they clearly state that you should be cautious about that story? Rogan enquired.
Zuckerberg said, “I don’t recall whether it was that explicitly, but it roughly matched the pattern.”
But Rogan persisted, asking what happened when the news was suppressed even though it turned out to be true.
‘Yeah. It’s awful how it ended out in retrospect, I mean. After the fact-checkers looked at it, nobody was able to refute it, correct? In essence, it went through a time where it received less dissemination,’ remarked Zuckerberg.
“I think it definitely stinks, but I think in the same sense that perhaps going through something like a criminal trial, but ultimately being found innocent, stinks.” Even if you were found not guilty at the conclusion of the criminal trial, it still stinks, he said.
I’m not sure whether the response would have been to do nothing or to have no procedure. The procedure seemed to me to be rather sensible. We still permit sharing, but clearly you don’t want circumstances like that,’ he said.
Conservatives accused Twitter for banning the story both before and after the 2020 presidential election.
Many believed the massive collection of documents, emails, and pictures to be the smoking gun that might have changed the outcome of the election, but Facebook and Twitter’s heads of social media downplayed the story out of mistaken concern that it may include Russian disinformation.
Republican Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley was one of the people who responded to Zuckerberg’s comments on the Rogan program.
We now know that Facebook restricted the propagation of the Hunter Biden laptop report after the FBI contacted them, Sen. Grassley tweeted.
He said, “FBI and Facebook/Big Tech meddled in the 2020 election, using Facebook as a government tool.” Both Facebook and the FBI need to be ashamed of themselves for meddling in our election.
‘The FBI cooperated with Big Tech to stifle news articles weeks before the 2020 election in an effort to limit your access to information,’ said GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy.
Democrats in Congress have consciously chosen to ignore the truth. We will hold them all responsible once Republicans regain control of the government.
Ron Johnson said: “We need whistleblowers to come forward to disclose the truth, hold individuals responsible, and restore integrity and trust to the FBI and government agencies.” Ted Cruz described it as “total corruption, plain and simple.” We must investigate the source of this corruption.
VERIFYING THE COMPUTER
To verify the validity of the hard disk, DailyMail.com hired Maryman & Associates’ cyber forensics specialists to analyze it.
Brad Maryman, the company’s creator, was a 29-year FBI veteran who established the bureau’s cyber forensics division and served as its chief information security officer. Dr. Joseph Greenfield, his spouse, is an associate professor at the University of Southern California and contributed to the development of the school’s intelligence and cyber operations degree program.
Greenfield and Maryman conducted a thorough investigation of the hard drive and wrote an article for DailyMail.com outlining their conclusions.
They discovered a total of 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, and more than 2,000 images using the same forensic methods used by federal and state law enforcement in criminal investigations.
– On the laptop, they discovered emails from many accounts going back to 2009, along with additional information from 2016 to 2019 that “appears to be relevant to Mr. Biden.”
– The report’s conclusions lined up with the hard drive’s known timeframe. Hunter left his 2017 MacBook Pro laptop there on April 12, 2019, according to a repair order with his signature from a computer retailer in Wilmington, Delaware.
– The Maryman & Associates study said that on March 28, 2018, the first “Macintosh HD” drive was built.
– On October 21, 2018, and February 2, 2019, Hunter’s work email at his company Rosemont Seneca and his iCloud email address were added to the laptop’s operating system.
– On the same day, a Gmail account he used to access sex cam websites and another one of Hunter’s personal Gmail accounts were also included.
– On February 7, 2019, Beau Biden’s previous Gmail account was added.
– The system included emails sent to Hunter’s different email accounts between December 2009 and December 2020.
– In January 2019 and again a month later, an iPad with the name “Hunter’s iPad” and three email accounts connected to the Biden family were backed up on the laptop and on iCloud.
– Greenfield discovered 818 call records with timestamps from June 2016 to February 2019 on this iPad backup.
– Between April 2016 and January 2019, 8,942 contacts were added to the iPad’s contacts book.
– The laptop and an iPhone XS were synchronized in February 2019. The timestamps of the data on the phone and its serial number agreed. The investigation concluded that “The operating system timestamps seem to be legitimate,” adding that “no evidence was uncovered to imply that the timestamps or data were changed or created.” “No evidence was uncovered that would imply the data was faked,” the statement reads.