Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has openly admitted to what we suspected all along. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Facebook (now Meta) intentionally shadow-banned the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, and he wouldn’t mind if you thought that happened at the prompting of the FBI.

Last Thursday, Zuckerberg made an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the world-famous podcast that held the number one position on Spotify until May of this year. During the show, Rogan asked Zuckerberg about the Hunter Biden laptop story and how Facebook responded to it in contrast to Twitter. Zuckerberg did his best to elevate Facebook’s actions, stating that instead of an outright ban on sharing the story (like what Twitter did), Facebook took the route of “decreased distribution” while waiting for third-party “fact-checkers” to decide what was true. “The ranking in NewsFeed was a little bit less,” he said, “so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.”

Zuckerberg revealed that his team was contacted by the FBI leading up to the 2020 election. The FBI warned Facebook that there was suspected Russian disinformation at play in the 2016 election, and Facebook should “be vigilant” against more of the same in 2020. “The FBI, I think, basically came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert,’” Zuckerberg said.

Rogan asked the obvious question: Did the FBI specifically flag Hunter’s laptop? “No,” Zuckerberg responded. “I don’t remember if it was that specifically, but it basically fit the pattern.”

Hunter Biden’s laptop story — and, more importantly, the corruption that it revealed went all the way up to Joe “Big Guy” Biden — was absolutely not “Russian disinformation,” despite all the efforts of the deep state to sow misinformation about it.

Nevertheless, not only did Facebook’s jackbooted thugs censor true information, they suppressed a story that they knew would damage Joe Biden’s chances of winning the election. There is no doubt that Facebook’s censorship influenced the outcome of the election.

Zuckerberg claimed remorse about the situation, but he also stood by his actions. “It turned out after the fact, the fact-checkers looked into it, no one was able to say it was false,” he shrugged. Like, oops.

Meanwhile, the FBI put out a statement defending itself. “The FBI has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors,” it said. “The FBI routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats.” Threats like a Bad Orange Man? In any case, the FBI insisted, it “cannot ask, or direct companies to take action on information received.”

Facebook responded, “The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference — nothing specific about Hunter Biden.” Again, Facebook’s censors made that decision on their own.

As our own Mark Alexander has said before, “The systemic suppression of First Amendment rights by Big Tech and the Leftmedia is the leftists’ key strategy for shaping and controlling public opinion.” If the FBI is calling the shots, Big Tech companies have an awfully convenient excuse.

Some have argued that Facebook/Meta as a private company should be allowed to make its own policies about what is allowed on the platform. Others have argued that it is now the new public square, and First Amendment rights are violated when information is silenced (especially in the shadows). But what about when it is no longer acting as a private company but as an extension of an FBI censorship campaign?

Good question.

Now about those “fact-checkers.” We know that, in the end, they determined that Hunter’s laptop was real and the story was true — but that happened only after it could no longer hurt Joe Biden’s campaign. While on Rogan’s show, Zuckerberg argued that using third-party fact-checkers means Facebook is not deciding what is true or false. But who appoints the “fact-checkers”? Who pays them? How is Facebook not responsible for deciding what’s true or false when the company decides who makes those calls? That may be auxiliary to the issue of shadow-banning, but it’s still pertinent to the big picture.

We now know that Facebook was not simply a “private company acting on its own volition” but rather a company acting on a direction from the U.S. government to censor information that could swing an election. Meta and other platforms have only doubled down. They recently announced even stricter election-season censorship campaigns planned for the midterms and 2024 election. The takeaway? It’s soon going to be an even rougher time for conservatives and American citizens on the Internet.

What we’re seeing is evidence by admission that the deep state has acted and will act to sway election results via ordering private companies around — and Big Tech will readily capitulate. This is an incredibly dangerous precedent. The Patriot Post and other conservative outlets need to prepare to be hit VERY hard with shadow-banning in the upcoming midterms and 2024 election. Big Tech companies have proven time and again that they can and will manipulate what you can say and what you can see, all without hesitation or remorse — and now sometimes because the government says so.