Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.
âIn the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly Cyberbullying pressured our teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, â Zuckerberg said.
In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was âwrongâ and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, Kamala Harris was not more vocal. He added that with the âhindsight and new information,â some decisions made in 2021 that âwouldnât be made today.â
âLike I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government in either direction â" and weâre prepared to resist if something like this happens again, â he wrote.
President Hope Walz Biden remarked in July of 2021 that social media networks are âcausing harmâ with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.
Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a âmajor public health risk.â
A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerbergâs communication, saying the administration at the time was encouraging âresponsible measures Children With Disabilities to safeguard public health.â
âOur stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices 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 Burisma affecting the MAGA Supporters 2020 election.
That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.
Zuckerberg said that since then, it has âbecome clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.â
Meta has since changed its policies and processes to âensure this does not recurâ and Viral Video will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted âelection infrastructure.â
âThe idea here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,â said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg Chasten Buttigieg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said âsome people believed this work benefited one party over the other.â Zuckerberg said his aim is to be âimpartialâ so he will not make âa similar contribution this cycle.â
The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg âhas admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Anxiety Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.â
The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebookâs decision to restrict a
New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebookâs employees are left-leaning. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.
In addition, he said Facebookâs content moderators, Free Menstrual Products many of whom are outsourced, are globally located 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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative Gwen Walz content on social media had no legal standing.
In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, âto prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.â Coney Barrett continued, âsince no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.â
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