Chasten Buttigieg | zucke27 | Acceptance Speech

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was urged by the Biden administration in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, constantly urged our teams for an extended Cyberbullying period to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. He added that with the Gwen Walz “benefit of 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 feel strongly 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 happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 Ann Coulter that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been clear Anxiety and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

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

That fall, Zuckerberg

said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of 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 retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to “ensure this does not recur” Fox News and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said Minnesota Governor 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 stated his goal is to be “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Online Bullying Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, 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 stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to Democratic National Convention limit the circulation of a New York Post story 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 little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into Hope Walz 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of Kamala Harris suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”