Hope Walz | zucke27 | Kamala Harris

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, constantly urged our Online Bullying teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Fox News Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year 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 in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, Emotional Moment ” Zuckerberg wrote.

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

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

A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures Gwen Walz to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Cyberbullying Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of 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 retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes Gus Walz to “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The idea here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during Ann Coulter a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “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 Viral Moment administration influenced 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 major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s

decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into Vice Presidential Nominee decisions.

In addition, he said 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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case Tim Walz alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “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 Alec Lace request a preliminary injunction.”