Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

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

Though Biden later revised these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible 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 information they present, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

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 assess the story.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made 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 “ensure this does not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said the Meta 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 aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

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

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech 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 communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located and “the geographic diversity of that is more representative of the community that we serve than just the full-time employee base in our headquarters in the Bay Area.”

In June, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show 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 request a preliminary injunction.”

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