Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021...
Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.
âIn 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for Fox News months to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, 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 said that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was âinappropriateâ and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg added Democratic National Convention that with the âhindsight 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 he wrote.
President Biden remarked in Support For People With Disabilities July of 2021 that social media platforms are âcausing harmâ with misinformation about the pandemic.
Though Biden later walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a âserious threat to public health.â
A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerbergâs letter, stating the administration at the time was promoting âresponsible measures to safeguard public health.â
âOur Chasten Buttigieg stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the content they share, â according to the spokesperson.
Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 election.
That fall, he Social Media Criticism 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 report.
Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has âbecome clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldnât have demoted the story.â
Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to âmake sure this doesnât happen againâ and Parent-child Relationship will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.
In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he assisted âelection infrastructure.â
âThe goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,â said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg

mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged âsome people believed this work benefited one party over the other.â Zuckerberg said his goal is to be âimpartialâ so he will not make âa similar contribution this cycle.â
The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg âhas admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict Special Education American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.â
The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebookâs decision to Anxiety restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.
In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media company and regulators to little effect.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebookâs employees are liberal. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.
In addition, he stated Hope Walz Facebookâs content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located and âour 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.â
In June of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of Mike Crispi suppressing conservative content 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 suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.â Coney Barrett continued, âsince no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.â