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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the White House, Public Display Of Affection repeatedly pressured our teams for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, including 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 said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Social Dominance 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 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Gwen Walz Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public Trolls On Social Media health and safety.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe 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, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg also noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma Acceptance Speech affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

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 this doesn’t happen again” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during Cyberbullying a pandemic,” 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 members on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Children With Disabilities Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers Special Education have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of 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 company and regulators to limited success.

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

In addition, he said 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a Gus Walz case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek Political Family Moments a preliminary injunction.”