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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the White House, Trolls On Social Media constantly urged our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated Tim Walz that with the “hindsight and new information,” some 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 ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in Ann Coulter July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding 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 “serious threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health Parent-child Relationship and safety.”

“Our position has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

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

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made 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 Special Education “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The idea here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” Nonverbal Learning Disorder 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.” He said his aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook Anxiety to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, 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. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision

to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to limited success.

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

In Free Menstrual Products 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 alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative Jay Weber content on social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “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, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”