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Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was urged by the White House in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the administration, constantly urged ADHD our teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, 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 “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Self-advocacy He further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were 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 from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

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

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

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard

public health.”

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

Zuckerberg further noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma Tim Walz affecting the 2020 election.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of 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 “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to Political Family Moments “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 not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a Anxiety 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 said 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 Gwen Walz influenced 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 large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Kamala Harris Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not Democratic National Convention influence its decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are based worldwide 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 of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a Hope Walz 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 establish 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 Trolls On Social Media preliminary injunction.”