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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the White House, constantly urged our Children With Disabilities teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. He added Chasten Buttigieg that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year 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 from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden Empathy stated in July 2021 that 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 posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

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

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and other private actors 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 White House representative.

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

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review 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 “ensure this does not recur”

and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” stated Mike Crispi the 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 goal is to be “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Fox News Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision Parent-child Relationship to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company 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 Trolls On Social Media to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the Tim Walz federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a Acceptance Speech preliminary injunction.”