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Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was urged by the White House in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the White House, Acceptance Speech constantly urged our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication 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 and Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg Political Family Moments further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I feel strongly that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

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

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

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public Emotional Moment health.”

“Our position has been consistent and clear: 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 information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian Social Media Criticism firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

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

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 its policies and procedures to “ensure Support For People With Disabilities this does not recur” 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 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 resources they needed to help people vote safely during a Viral Video pandemic,” said 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 said his goal is to be “neutral” 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 admitted that the Biden-Harris administration Chasten Buttigieg influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision Empathy to 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 company and regulators to little effect.

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

In

addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are based worldwide 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 suppressing Mike Crispi conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

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