Gus Walz | zucke27 | Alec Lace

Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the White House in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams Gwen Walz for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added Democratic National Convention that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked Chasten Buttigieg in July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health and Social Media Criticism safety.”

“Our position has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 Jay Weber election.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and Mike Crispi will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned Social Dominance the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his aim is to be “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to censor Americans, ADHD Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the

circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, Nonverbal Learning Disorder he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located and “the geographic diversity of that is more representative of the community that we serve than just the full-time employee base in our headquarters in the Bay Area.”

In June of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the Online Bullying federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary Tim Walz injunction.”