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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the Biden administration in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the White House, Self-advocacy repeatedly pressured our teams for an extended period to remove 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 House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more Parent-child Relationship outspoken. He further stated 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 strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg Chasten Buttigieg wrote.

President Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, 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 promoting “responsible actions to Fox News protect public health and safety.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

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

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

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 changed its Social Media Criticism policies and processes to “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help Democratic National Convention people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He stated his goal is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “has

admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican Hope Walz lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media company and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he held that the company takes care not to Jay Weber allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a Public Display Of Affection case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, 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 seek a Trolls On Social Media preliminary injunction.”