Gwen Walz | zucke27 | Tim Walz

Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was urged by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the White House, constantly urged Kamala Harris our teams for months to remove some content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg Social Dominance further stated that with the “benefit of 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 in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, Democratic National Convention ” he wrote.

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

Though Biden later walked back 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 communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging Acceptance Speech “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

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

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden Ann Coulter and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

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

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 changed its policies and

processes to “ensure 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 idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe Nonverbal Learning Disorder voting during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned 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 “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that Vice Presidential Nominee 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 faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers Online Bullying have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he held that the company takes care not Public Display Of Affection 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in Children With Disabilities a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, 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, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing Jay Weber to request a preliminary injunction.”