Minnesota Governor | zucke27 | Jay Weber

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was urged by the Biden administration in 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months Alec Lace to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with Kamala Harris the “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 strongly believe that we should not lower 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in

July 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

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

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

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the Emotional Moment 2020 election.

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

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” Trolls On Social Media and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated Tim Walz 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.” Zuckerberg stated 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 influenced Mike Crispi 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically Political Family Moments scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story 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 session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does Support For People With Disabilities not influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated 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 of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in Empathy a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing Anxiety to seek a preliminary injunction.”