Special Education | zucke27 | Empathy

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was influenced by the White House in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams Self-advocacy for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, such as satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he experienced in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, Chasten Buttigieg was not more vocal. Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 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 â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens Anxiety again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding 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 White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible Social Dominance measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: 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 content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

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

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

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and Minnesota Governor procedures to “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting Viral Video 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.” Zuckerberg stated his goal is to be “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives 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 censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically Vice Presidential Nominee scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict 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 giant and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he held that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, Fox News he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the federal government of censoring conservative Kamala Harris voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate 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.”