A hot white potato: Mark Zuckerberg has denied claims he cutting a deal with one-time President Donald Trump's administration in 2022 to avoid fact-checking political posts if it didn't impose "heavy-handed regulations." The claim comes from billionaire entrepreneur and venture backer Peter Thiel's new biography, an extract of which was published yesterday.

According to Thiel's book, called "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power," the billionaire venture capitalist joined Zuckerberg, President Trump, Trump counselor and son-in-constabulary Jared Kushner, and their spouses at the White House in 2022.

Author Max Chafkin writes that "the specifics of the discussion were hugger-mugger — but, as I report in my volume, Thiel later told a confidant that Zuckerberg came to an understanding with Kushner during the meal."

"Facebook, he promised, would avoid fact-checking political spoken language — thus assuasive the Trump campaign to claim whatever it wanted. In return the Trump administration would lay off on any heavy-handed regulations."

According to the book, Thiel told a confidant the meeting resulted in an "understanding" that Facebook would push "state-sanctioned conservatism."

In September 2022, Nick Clegg, Facebook'south vice president of global diplomacy, announced that the company would not exist fact-checking posts from politicians. Zuckerberg famously said that it didn't want to be an "arbiter of truth."

During the Black Lives Affair protests, Facebook failed to remove a post from Trump that read, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," despite Twitter hiding the aforementioned argument on its platform. The book also notes that Facebook mostly failed to curtail the spread of 'End the Steal' groups in the days earlier the Jan 6 US Capitol attack.

While the evidence confronting Facebook might seem quite damning, the dinner described in the book appears to have taken place a month after Clegg'south announcement, in Oct 2022. Clegg also said that the fact-checking policy had been implemented in September 2022.

Facebook communications main Andy Stone tweeted that Facebook's "policy was announced before this dinner e'er took place." Zuckerberg has also refuted the volume's claim, calling it "pretty ridiculous."

In June 2022, Facebook extended Trump's ban from the service to two years and promised to stop giving politicians preferential treatment when deciding if a post is newsworthy.