Ann Coulter | zucke27 | Mike Crispi

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for an ADHD extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Kamala Harris He added that with the “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 strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Political Family Moments Biden stated in July 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted 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 measures to safeguard public

health.”

“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 American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the Alec Lace election in 2020.

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 hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “make Gus Walz sure this doesn’t happen again” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely Tim Walz during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his goal is to be “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted Self-advocacy that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative circles. Gwen Walz Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media giant and policymakers to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not Chasten Buttigieg influence its decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case Trolls On Social Media alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal 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 experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing Parent-child Relationship to seek a preliminary injunction.”