Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, including satirical and humorous posts.
“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the White House, constantly urged our teams for an Social Media Criticism extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, †Zuckerberg noted.
In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate†and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that Hope Walz with the “hindsight and new information,†there were decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.â€
“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 government in either direction â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, †Zuckerberg wrote.
President Biden stated Special Education in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people†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.â€
A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard Minnesota Governor public health.â€
“Our position has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, †according to the White House representative.
Zuckerberg also noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Democratic National Convention Burisma affecting the 2020 election.
That fall, he 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 “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.â€
Meta has since changed its policies and processes to “ensure this Ann Coulter does not recur†and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.â€
“The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,†Cyberbullying said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.†He stated his aim is to be “impartial†so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.â€
The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook
to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.â€
The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict Free Menstrual Products a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.
In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted 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 Viral Video 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.â€
In June, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on ADHD social media had no legal standing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.†Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.â€
