'Blood on your hands': A look back at Mark Zuckerberg's tense moments in congressional hearings
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's newly unveiled freedom of speech policies signal a major shift in the Facebook social media platform's content moderation strategy, following years of congressional clashes over alleged "censorship" and the regulation of political information.
"We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video posted Tuesday morning. "More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S."
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Zuckerberg's shift in content moderation comes amid a history of being grilled by politicians on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
In January 2024, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., confronted Zuckerberg during a heated exchange about the harmful impact of social media on users, particularly young girls. The questioning followed revelations from internal Meta studies that indicated a significant number of teenage girls were exposed to harmful content, including unwanted nudity, sexual advances, and material promoting self-harm, within just one week.
"So, you didn’t take any action, you didn’t fire anybody, you haven’t compensated a single victim. Let me ask you this. There are families of victims here today. Have you apologized to the victims? Would you like to apologize now?" Hawley said, drawing applause from the audience.
In response, Zuckerberg rose from his seat and addressed the crowd directly, saying, "I’m sorry for everything you’ve all been through. No one should have to go through the things that your families suffered."
Zuckerberg added, "This is why we’ve invested so much… and will continue through industry-leading efforts to make sure that no [one has] to go through what your families have had to suffer."
In that same hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a scathing rebuke of the tech giant CEO.
"Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands," Graham said. "You have a product that's killing people."
Graham's remark came in light of South Carolina state Rep. Brandon Guffey suing Instagram following 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 the Meta-owned app.
In 2018, then-House lawmakers grilled Zuckerberg over the site’s failure to protect the personal information of 87 million users. Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in 2004 from his Harvard dorm room, said in a Facebook post at the time, "Looking back, it’s clear we were too slow identifying election interference in 2016, and we need to do better in future elections."
In November 2020, then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg both faced the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing titled "Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election." The session put the spotlight on the tech giants' controversial content moderation decisions, including the suppression of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden just weeks before the presidential election.
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Testifying remotely, both CEOs acknowledged missteps and outlined how they'd 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, over 140 million users visited the Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, with 33 million accessing 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 like partnerships with election officials, the removal of false claims, and warnings applied to over 150 million pieces of content reviewed by independent fact-checkers. Facebook also implemented "policies prohibiting explicit or implicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote as well as attempts to use threats related to COVID-19 to scare people into not voting," according to Zuckerberg’s testimony.
Meta’s third-party fact-checking program was put in place after the 2016 election and had been used to "manage content" and misinformation on its platforms, largely due to "political pressure," executives said, but admitted the system has "gone too far."
Last year, Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, in which he admitted that he felt pressure from the Biden administration, particularly with regard to COVID-19 content, and even subjects like satire and humor.
"The thing is, as American companies, when other governments around the world that don’t have our tradition or our First Amendment, when they see the United States government pressuring U.S. companies to take down content, it is just open season then for those governments to put more pressure [on their companies]," explained Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan. "We do think it is 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, Trump-Vance transition spokesperson said, "President Trump has always been 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 once again safe," she added.
Fox News Digital's Brooke Singman and Adonis Hoffman contributed to this report.