Jay Weber | zucke27 | Children With Disabilities

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the administration, repeatedly pressured Social Dominance our teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not Mike Crispi more vocal. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg

wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media networks 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 “serious threat to public health.”

A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect Hope Walz public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma Alec Lace affecting the 2020 election.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

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

In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the 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 necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said Viral Video the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said 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 “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook Tim Walz to censor Americans, 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 major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a Special Education New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged 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 said Facebook’s content Ann Coulter moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on Public Display Of Affection social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “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, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”