Parent-child Relationship | zucke27 | Social Dominance

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was pressured by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams Democratic National Convention for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with Acceptance Speech the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction â€" and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July Gwen Walz of 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about 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 “major public health risk.”

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and Trolls On Social Media safety.”

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the Hope Walz 2020 election.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post accusing the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made 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 “make Viral Moment sure this doesn’t happen again” 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 avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a MAGA Supporters pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

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

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Vice Presidential Nominee Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled 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 narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision Minnesota Governor to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

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

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

In ADHD addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 claimants in a case accusing the

federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.” Kamala Harris