Mike Crispi | zucke27 | Democratic National Convention

Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for Social Media Criticism months to remove some content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg further stated that with the Trolls On Social Media “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, 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 stated in Special Education July of 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 stated at the time that misinformation posted 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 public health and

safety.”

“Our position has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” 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 Burisma affecting the Viral Moment 2020 election.

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

Zuckerberg stated 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 changed its policies and processes to “ensure this does not Vice Presidential Nominee recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Public Display Of Affection Meta CEO.

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

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to Cyberbullying restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a Emotional Moment report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted 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 employees are left-leaning. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Viral Video 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 ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government Children With Disabilities of suppressing conservative content on social media had no 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 experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”