Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to remove some content about COVID-19, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “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 compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

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

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

“Our position has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

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

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become 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” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said 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.” Zuckerberg stated his aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

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

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

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near 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 to request a preliminary injunction.”
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
35 |
36 |
37 |
38 |
39 |
40 |
41 |
42 |
43 |
44 |
45 |
46 |
47 |
48 |
49 |
50 |
51 |
52 |
53 |
54 |
55 |
56 |
57 |
58 |
59 |
60 |
61 |
62 |
63 |
64 |
65 |
66 |
67 |
68 |
69 |
70 |
71 |
72 |
73 |
74 |
75 |
76 |
77 |
78 |
79 |
80 |
81 |
82 |
83 |
84 |
85 |
86 |
87 |
88 |
89 |
90 |
91 |
92 |
93 |
94 |
95 |
96 |
97 |
98 |
99 |
100 |
101 |
102 |
103 |
104 |
105 |
106 |
107 |
108 |
109 |
110 |
111 |
112 |
113 |
114 |
115 |
116 |
117 |
118 |
119 |
120 |
121 |
122 |
123 |
124 |
125 |
126 |
127 |
128 |
129 |
130 |
131 |
132 |
133 |
134 |
135 |
136 |
137 |
138 |
139 |
140 |
141 |
142 |
143 |
144 |
145 |
146 |
147 |
148 |
149 |
150 |
151 |
152 |
153 |
154 |
155 |
156 |
157 |
158 |
159 |
160 |
161 |
162 |
163 |
164 |
165 |
166 |
167 |
168 |
169 |
170 |
171 |
172 |
173 |
174 |
175 |
176 |
177 |
178 |
179 |
180 |
181 |
182 |
183 |
184 |
185 |
186 |
187 |
188 |
189 |
190 |
191 |
192 |
193 |
194 |
195 |
196 |
197 |
198 |
199 |
200 |
201 |
202 |
203 |
204 |
205 |
206 |
207 |
208 |
209 |
210 |
211 |
212 |
213 |
214 |
215 |
216 |
217 |
218 |
219 |
220 |
221 |
222 |
223 |
224 |
225 |
226 |
227 |
228 |
229 |
230 |
231 |
232 |
233 |
234 |
235 |
236 |
237 |
238 |
239 |
240 |
241 |