Acceptance Speech | zucke27 | Ann Coulter

Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams Tim Walz for months to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg further stated that Nonverbal Learning Disorder with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year 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 Administration from either side â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked Hope Walz in July of 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

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

“Our Political Family Moments position has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, 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 Burisma affecting the election in Democratic National Convention 2020.

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

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this does not recur” and will Fox News no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the communication 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 resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives Trolls On Social Media were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg said his aim is to be “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted Vice Presidential Nominee content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased 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 examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of Empathy a report by the New York Post 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 staff are left-leaning. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s

content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are based worldwide 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 of this year, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of Children With Disabilities suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”