Acceptance Speech | zucke27 | Chasten Buttigieg

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the White House in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the White House, repeatedly Social Dominance pressured our teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal.

He added that with the “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in that year 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 in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Nonverbal Learning Disorder 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 stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

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

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we think 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, ” according to the White House representative.

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

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “make sure this Mike Crispi doesn’t happen again” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Meta Kamala Harris CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his goal 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 claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to censor Minnesota Governor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit Democratic National Convention the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

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

In addition, Ann Coulter he said 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 of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government Vice Presidential Nominee of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish 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.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”