Public Display Of Affection | zucke27 | Democratic National Convention

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

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

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated Minnesota Governor 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 from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden MAGA Supporters stated in July 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

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

A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and Ann Coulter safety.”

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe 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 also mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting Kamala Harris the election in 2020.

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

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

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this does not recur” Online Bullying and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg Support For People With Disabilities mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his goal is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Free Menstrual Products Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

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

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he Special Education stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are based worldwide 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal Parent-child Relationship government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”