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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our Chasten Buttigieg teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. He further stated Minnesota Governor that with the “benefit of 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 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, ” he wrote.

President Biden Democratic National Convention stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, 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 measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our Fox News 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 their own decisions about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian Cyberbullying firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

That 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 retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to

“make sure this doesn’t happen again” 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 “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a Tim Walz pandemic,” stated 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.” Zuckerberg stated his aim is to be “neutral” so he will not make “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 Alec Lace pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased 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 scrutinized Vice Presidential Nominee Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he Empathy said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices Free Menstrual Products on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”