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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, repeatedly Self-advocacy pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Gus Walz He added that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I strongly believe 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 occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg Democratic National Convention wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

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

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public Fox News health and safety.”

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

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Online Bullying the Ukrainian firm Burisma 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 review the report.

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

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to Viral Moment “ensure this does not recur” 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 jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during Jay Weber a pandemic,” stated 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 “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

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

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Vice Presidential Nominee Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he

said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located and “our global team better represents the diversity of the community 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 alleging the federal government of Gwen Walz suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”