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Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was urged by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for months Viral Moment to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with the Anxiety “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 compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked Children With Disabilities in July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

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

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to Political Family Moments protect public health and safety.”

“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 independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Alec Lace Burisma affecting the 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 story.

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since changed its policies and Trolls On Social Media processes 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 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting Online Bullying during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his goal is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the

Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers Fox News have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers 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 takes care not to allow Minnesota Governor political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case Support For People With Disabilities accusing the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate 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 Gwen Walz a preliminary injunction.”