Tim Walz | zucke27 | Jay Weber

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the White House, constantly urged our

teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. He added that with Kamala Harris 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 in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

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

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

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

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

Zuckerberg also noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

That Online Bullying fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review 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 changed its policies and processes to “make sure this doesn’t MAGA Supporters happen again” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

“The idea here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Emotional Moment Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He said his aim is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook Hope Walz to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced 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 Social Media Criticism restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

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

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 addition, Democratic National Convention 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case Self-advocacy alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to Special Education seek a preliminary injunction.”