Emotional Moment | zucke27 | Fox News
Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was urged by the White House in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.
âIn the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the White House, constantly urged Gwen Walz our teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didnât agree, â Zuckerberg said.
In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in 2021 was âwrongâ and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg further stated that with the Political Family Moments âbenefit of hindsight 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 strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â" and weâre prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, â Zuckerberg wrote.
President Biden remarked in Ann Coulter July 2021 that social media platforms are âkilling peopleâ with misinformation surrounding 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 âserious threat to public health.â
A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerbergâs communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging âresponsible actions to protect public health Parent-child Relationship and safety.â
âOur stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions about the content they share, â according to the White House representative.
Zuckerberg also noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma Gus Walz affecting the election in 2020.
That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the story.
Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has âbeen made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.â
Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to Jay Weber âmake sure this doesnât happen againâ and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support âelection infrastructure.â
âThe goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote Mike Crispi safely during a pandemic,â stated the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged âsome people believed this work benefited one party over the other.â He stated his goal is to be âimpartialâ so will not be âa similar contribution this cycle.â
The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and said Zuckerberg âjust admitted that the Cyberbullying Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.â
The Meta chief has long been under 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 gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have Acceptance Speech specifically examined Facebookâs decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.
In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebookâs employees are liberal. But he held that the company takes care not
to allow political bias to seep into decisions.
In addition, he stated 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in Empathy a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, âto prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm that is traceable to a government defendant.â Coney Barrett continued, âbecause no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to Self-advocacy seek a preliminary injunction.â