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Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our Viral Video teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Ann Coulter Zuckerberg added that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I strongly believe 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Political Family Moments Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” 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 White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health Alec Lace 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 American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election Kamala Harris in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

Zuckerberg said 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 “ensure this Empathy 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 stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a Vice Presidential Nominee 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.” He said his aim is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Viral Moment 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 large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched 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 recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content Free Menstrual Products moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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 plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on Minnesota Governor social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm 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.”