Public Display Of Affection | zucke27 | Special Education

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our Democratic National Convention teams for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, Alec Lace was not more outspoken. He added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the

future, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

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

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

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was promoting MAGA Supporters “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian Online Bullying disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the story.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the Kamala Harris story.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

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

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the Fox News resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated 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 members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X Children With Disabilities and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in Trolls On Social Media conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he maintained that the company takes care not Viral Moment to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the Anxiety claimants in a case accusing 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 demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing Tim Walz to request a preliminary injunction.”