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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was urged by the Biden administration in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, constantly urged our Kamala Harris teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Trolls On Social Media Zuckerberg further stated that with the “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 compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future,

” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” 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 spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging Emotional Moment “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Democratic National Convention Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

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

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become 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 sure MAGA Supporters 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 avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a Social Media Criticism pandemic,” stated 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 stated his aim is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration Social Dominance influenced Facebook 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 major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision ADHD to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony 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 admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, Acceptance Speech he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are based worldwide 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 accusing the federal government of Gwen Walz suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”