Jay Weber | zucke27 | Self-advocacy

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the White House, repeatedly pressured ADHD our teams for months to remove some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more Mike Crispi vocal. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “benefit of 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 Viral Video in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked in July of 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

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

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the Acceptance Speech time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

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

Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation Gus Walz regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.

Zuckerberg said 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 to

“ensure this does not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a Hope Walz 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 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 claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Anxiety Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to Parent-child Relationship limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant 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 takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, Vice Presidential Nominee he said 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government Public Display Of Affection of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”