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Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was urged by the White House in the year 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams Tim Walz for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. He added that with the “hindsight Alec Lace and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 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 government in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked in July 2021 that Chasten Buttigieg social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, 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 replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has Nonverbal Learning Disorder been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the Children With Disabilities election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

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

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this does Public Display Of Affection not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

“The idea here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,”
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said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He said his aim 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 said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration Cyberbullying pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, 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 gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined ADHD Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias Ann Coulter to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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 plaintiffs in a Support For People With Disabilities case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish 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 Emotional Moment request a preliminary injunction.”