MAGA Supporters | zucke27 | Gus Walz

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to limit certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, constantly urged Public Display Of Affection our teams for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. He Viral Moment added that with the “hindsight and new information,” some 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

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

Though Biden later revised these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance ADHD has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the 2020 Ann Coulter election.

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

Zuckerberg stated 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 “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 stated he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” stated the Meta Parent-child Relationship CEO.

Zuckerberg 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 pressured Facebook to restrict Empathy American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the Political Family Moments circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media giant and regulators 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 Online Bullying addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 a case accusing the federal government of Fox News censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

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