Public Display Of Affection | zucke27 | Democratic National Convention

Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the White House, repeatedly pressured our Ann Coulter teams for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more Social Dominance outspoken. Zuckerberg 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 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 happens again, ” Zuckerberg Support For People With Disabilities wrote.

President Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated 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, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures ADHD to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities 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 spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma Trolls On Social Media affecting the election in 2020.

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

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “make Mike Crispi sure this doesn’t happen again” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

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

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg said 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 “has admitted that the Biden-Harris

administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, 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 major tech platforms of being biased 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 Facebook’s Cyberbullying decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

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

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in Jay Weber a case alleging the federal government of 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 near 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 request Anxiety a preliminary injunction.”