Alec Lace | zucke27 | Empathy

Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was influenced by the White House in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for months to censor certain Tim Walz COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. He further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight Ann Coulter 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 government from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

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

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

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has Parent-child Relationship been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma Viral Moment 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 review the report.

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure Children With Disabilities this does not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a Special Education pandemic,” stated 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 stated his goal is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration ADHD influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, 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 enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s Minnesota Governor decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow

political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are based worldwide 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 decided 6-3 that the claimants 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 stated, “to prove 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.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request Fox News a preliminary injunction.”