Tim Walz | zucke27 | Gus Walz

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

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the White House, Ann Coulter constantly urged our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the 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 vocal. Mike Crispi He further stated that with the “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 strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked

in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, 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 encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard Chasten Buttigieg public health.”

“Our stance has 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 content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Empathy Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

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

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

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

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely Gwen Walz 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 stated his aim is to be “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Minnesota Governor 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 been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers Jay Weber have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent 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 liberal. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence Fox News its decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 accusing the federal government of Emotional Moment suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, 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 traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”