Political Family Moments | zucke27 | Online Bullying

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly pressured our Social Dominance teams for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Kamala Harris Zuckerberg further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I feel strongly that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Parent-child Relationship Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said 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 letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions Hope Walz 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 White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned 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 alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have reduced Cyberbullying 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 communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the Self-advocacy necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

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

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and Vice Presidential Nominee claimed Zuckerberg “just 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 faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in Gus Walz 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 the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to limited success.

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

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a ADHD case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove 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, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to Emotional Moment seek a preliminary injunction.”