Gus Walz | zucke27 | Gwen Walz

Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to limit certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for Mike Crispi months to remove some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, 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.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg Empathy wrote.

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

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible Parent-child Relationship measures to safeguard public health.”

“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 independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

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

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 said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since changed ADHD 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 ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe Online Bullying voting during a pandemic,” stated 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 said his goal is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that Anxiety the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Alec Lace Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

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

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he maintained that the company ensures political Public Display Of Affection bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case Emotional Moment alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary Minnesota Governor injunction.”