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Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, constantly urged our Hope Walz teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, such as 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 felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. He added Free Menstrual Products that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were 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 in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

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

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

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our

stance has been consistent and clear: we believe 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, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma Tim Walz affecting the election in 2020.

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

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 updated its policies and procedures to Social Dominance “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The idea here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during Kamala Harris a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

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

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration Jay Weber pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s Gwen 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 close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

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

In addition, he Emotional Moment stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the federal Alec Lace government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”