Tim Walz | zucke27 | Kamala Harris

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly pressured Public Display Of Affection our teams for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, such as satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not Empathy more vocal. He added that with the “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he ADHD wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures

to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions 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 the Ukrainian firm Burisma Chasten Buttigieg affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become 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 “ensure this Democratic National Convention does 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 “election infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said Gwen Walz 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.” Zuckerberg said 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 claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook Nonverbal Learning Disorder to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, 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. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to Trolls On Social Media 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 giant and policymakers to little effect.

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

In addition, he stated Support For People With Disabilities Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the federal government Fox News of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”