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Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the White House, repeatedly pressured Minnesota Governor our teams for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. Gwen Walz He further stated that with the “benefit of 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 feel strongly that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” he Fox News wrote.

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

Though Biden later walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation posted 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 promoting “responsible Jay Weber 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 their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and

Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That 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 “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes Gus Walz to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people Parent-child Relationship vote safely during a pandemic,” said 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.” Zuckerberg said his goal is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted ADHD that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Vice Presidential Nominee Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media giant and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not Mike Crispi influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case Self-advocacy accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, 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 directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to Kamala Harris seek a preliminary injunction.”