Gwen Walz | zucke27 | Cyberbullying

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

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly Jay Weber pressured our teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and showed significant 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 felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Kamala Harris He further stated that with the “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 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 happens again, ” Zuckerberg Free Menstrual Products wrote.

President Biden remarked in July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about 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 spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible Parent-child Relationship measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden Fox News and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing the Biden family of 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 should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated Mike Crispi its policies and procedures to “ensure this does not recur” 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 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.”

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

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his goal is to be “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just Trolls On Social Media admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Support For People With Disabilities Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he held that the company ensures Hope Walz political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in Social Dominance a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm 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.”