Self-advocacy | zucke27 | Fox News

Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was urged by the Biden administration in 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams Ann Coulter for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He added that with the Kamala Harris “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 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 Administration from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July Gwen Walz of 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” 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 “major public health risk.”

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our Mike Crispi position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg also mentioned in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma Nonverbal Learning Disorder affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing the Biden family of 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 hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to Democratic National Convention “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 Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during Children With Disabilities a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his aim is to be “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

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

Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican Jay Weber lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

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

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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 of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the Trolls On Social Media 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 near future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a Empathy preliminary injunction.”