Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured ...
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.
âIn 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for Trolls On Social Media an extended period 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, â Zuckerberg noted.
In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was âwrongâ and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg Minnesota Governor further stated that with the âbenefit of hindsight and new information,â some decisions made in that year that âwouldnât be made today.â
âAs I mentioned to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â" and weâre prepared to resist if something like this happens again, â Zuckerberg wrote.
President Nonverbal Learning Disorder Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media networks are âcausing harmâ with misinformation about 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 âmajor public health risk.â
A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerbergâs letter, stating the administration at the time was promoting âresponsible measures to safeguard public Empathy health.â
âOur stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the information they present, â according to the spokesperson.
Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm

Burisma affecting the 2020 election.
That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.
Zuckerberg said that since then, it has âbeen made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldnât have demoted the story.â
Meta has since changed its policies and processes to âensure Parent-child Relationship this does not recurâ and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.
In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he assisted âelection infrastructure.â
âThe idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,â Jay Weber stated the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged âsome people believed this work benefited one party over the other.â He said his aim is to be âneutralâ so will not be âa similar contribution this cycle.â
The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg âhas admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook Tim Walz to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.â
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 impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebookâs Gus Walz decision to limit the circulation of 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 company and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebookâs staff are liberal. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.
In addition, he Children With Disabilities said Facebookâs content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are based worldwide and âthe 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.â
In June of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal Hope Walz government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.
In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, âto prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.â Coney Barrett continued, âbecause no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.â