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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical and humorous posts.
âIn 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our Social Dominance teams for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didnât agree, â Zuckerberg noted.
In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was âinappropriateâ and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with Viral Moment the âbenefit of hindsight and new information,â some decisions made in that year that âwouldnât be made today.â
âLike I told our teams back then, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â" and weâre prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, â Zuckerberg wrote.
President Biden stated in July Political Family Moments 2021 that social media platforms are âcausing harmâ with misinformation about the pandemic.
Though Biden later walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a âmajor public health risk.â
A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerbergâs letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging âresponsible measures to safeguard public health.â
âOur position has been consistent Mike Crispi and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, â according to the White House representative.
Zuckerberg also mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.
That Support For People With Disabilities fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the story.
Zuckerberg said that since then, it has âbeen made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldnât have demoted the story.â
Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to âensure this does not recurâ
and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support âelectoral infrastructure.â
âThe idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,â said the Gwen Walz Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said âsome people believed this work benefited one party over the other.â Zuckerberg said his aim is to be âneutralâ so he will not make âa similar contribution this cycle.â
The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg âjust admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to Social Media Criticism censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.â
The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebookâs decision to restrict a Chasten Buttigieg New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In testimony before Congress 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 acknowledged that many of Facebookâs staff are left-leaning. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.
In addition, he stated Facebookâs Special Education content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located and âour 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.â
In June of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the federal government of censoring conservative voices Free Menstrual Products on social media had no standing.
In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, âto establish standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.â Coney Barrett continued, âbecause no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.â