‘Regret’: Mark Zuckerberg owes an ‘apology’ to public over censored content

but first for years people have called into question the role so social media Outlets played in framing the narrative in particular being the Arbiters of what is and isn't so-called fake news and for years these same people have been handed down as conspiracy theorists well today a lot of people have owed an apology with meta CEO Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly admitting and regretting that Facebook and Instagram censored covid posts and election content under pressure from senior figures in the Biden Harris White House now this is a huge admission and one that will have huge implications for the upcoming election and more joining me to discuss these foreign editor at the Australian Greg Sheridan well I think we all saw it firsthand in The Voice Greg I mean things that I said about the actual length the true length of the U statement from the heart they were taken down from Facebook we had to use lawyers at to argue our case and then get them put back up we can see how more and more Facebook you know frames The Narrative particularly in politics so I'm not surprised by this but I'm very disheartened to hear that it's been done so openly well you're right Peter I mean this is quite shocking this is quite shocking you're right it happened a lot in the voice our friends at the IPA weren't allowed to promote uh videos that they made which were not remotely hate speech or anything like that they just had a different view of the voice from the received wisdom the approved religion of our day and um this was enforced even though it turned out 60% of Australians voted no uh I think the hunter Biden laptop thing is the most disgraceful of all because probably Biden wouldn't have won that election if uh if if that story had been properly ventilated it showed that Hunter Biden was guilty of all kinds of criminality and it had a lot of very weirdly incriminating and suggestive material about the involvement of his dad Joe Biden who's been president for the last four years in Hunter Biden's uh business activities there was no smoking gun that Joe Biden had accepted bribes but there was really smelly stuff much more smelly than anything produced about Donald Trump and the social media companies refused to allow the story to to be ventilated on their platforms this was gross political censorship so you got two problems with social media you've got to civilize it it's got to get rid of you know calls for people to be murdered and you know doxing publishing people's private addresses and so forth can't do that apparently but what it can do is censor normal political debate is it going to change things do you think for the Republicans now now that this information's been out there and publicly admitted by zukerberg you know to be honest P I don't think it will uh I think this campaign is running very badly for Trump at the moment now it might turn around Harris is a very weak candidate in essence but the uh the majority of the American Media wants Harris to win and therefore I I don't think we're going to see things suppressed in the way they were with the hunter Biden laptop but um it's just not going to make an issue of any of this you know I watched the Democratic Convention CNN has a big thing about its fact Checkers well all the way through the Democrat convention they were saying Trump wants to have a national ban on abortion and he wants to uh uh prevent IVF from being used these things are both completely untrue the there's not a republican in in the US who wants to limit IVF and Trump has said he wants abortion to be handled by the states and not um and Vance says if the if Congress ever passed a ban Trump would would veto it but the fact Checkers for CNN didn't mention either of those matters so the the pro Harris media has just decided that there are no bad stories about Harris and no good stories for Trump so even though I think this is a shocking um development with social media I think in a sense Americans already know it in a way and and the people who would be influenced by it have already sort of factored it in now Trump's not behind by much but he's behind by enough to lose the election right now let's go to your discussion with John Howard where you were talking about that the VIS is being doled out to people from Gaza I think it was really significant that you spoke to Howard and he weighed in on it uh one thing he noted is he can't believe labor hasn't cleaned up the comments from Mike Burgess now I think they haven't cleaned them up because what Burgess was doing was he wasn't freelancing you you've got to conclude if two and a bit weeks on they haven't been contested his points about you know you can be a sympathizer of humas and that won't disqual disqualify you from getting a Visa it must be government policy for them to stand like they have well you know that's a fair fair inference Peter um I was very grateful to Mr Howard for agreeing to talk to me and I thought his intervention was enormously important he is the elder Statesman of our nation with Bob Hawk he's one of the two great postmen's prime minister Australia has ever had and he is shocked that anyone could suggest you can have rhetorical sympathy for H and still come into Australia one reason I I don't think it's just Burge simply stating government policy is this there are as you know Peter there are two levels to granting someone a Visa there's first the security question will this person possibly become a terrorist or provide material support to terrorists and that's what AO mainly decides on then there is the second question does this person pass the character test so loads and loads of people are denied visas to Australia there'd be thousands of cases we'd never hear of because of the character test without concluding that they are a positive security threat yet when Peter Dutton asked Anthony albanesi in the parliament you know would support for Hamas disqualify you on the character test albanesi just um confused everything by saying well AO is involved in all these clearances now that's not even true on its face but also it doesn't um it doesn't answer the question of what the government would decide on a character test I think Burgess did misspeak and I think he meant to make something like the distinction that I just made there but it's an unbelievable bugers mdle from the government and uh the government hasn't given us any so it won't defend burgess's comments it won't repudiate them and it won't explain them so if this is government policy it should explain that and Howard was absolutely right to say this is a model which is damaging the nation the the fact that the albanesi government is so cowardly in running away from this issue and won't explain you know Richard miles disgraceful last weekend he just wouldn't answer a straight question about vises and the government thinks this is a correct way to treat the Australian people as if we've got we're impertinent because we ask about it it's wrong for us just to ask about it I got to say that they think Australians live in in a bubble do they think that Australians are not watching what's playing out the case in Germany on the weekend you know three dead number of others you know stabbed in Street uh festivals I think it was uh a lot of anger there over the connections of the individual uh his background uh Islamic State now claiming responsibility we've seen a synagogue burnt down in France elsewhere this is a Tinder Box in Europe and people are concerned that their governments are not put National Security you know front and center and that they are this has got out of control that they they no longer can control these waves of illegal migration and the risks it's having to the cohesion inside countries Australians are looking at that and saying for God's sake do not bring this here and yet the government's giving them no confidence they've got this under control yeah I think you're absolutely right Peter so islamist terrorism never went away let me say the vast majority of Muslims who've ever come to Australia are perfectly law-abiding people and so on however if you take a lot of people from a radicalized population such as you know the population in Gaza not with you know and that's not to diminish the tragedy that civilians in Gaza are experiencing right now but if you take a lot of people from a radicalized population of course any one of them is very unlikely to to uh be a terrorist or a security threat but a a significant minority will give you some trouble down down the track that's just absolutely predictable now Hamas we know it's whole rais on data everything about it is anti-Semitic hatred and anti-western hatred so why it's just sort of can you believe Peter we're having this discussion that an Australian government would say that rhetorical support for Hamas is okay it's just I you know I have to pinch myself it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen in in a long life in journalism oh well I think it's horrific