ADHD | zucke27 | Social Media Criticism

Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the White House, constantly urged Tim Walz our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal.

He added 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 strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side â€" and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden Acceptance Speech stated in July 2021 that social media networks 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 spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect MAGA Supporters public health and safety.”

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

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

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.

Zuckerberg said 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 changed its policies and processes to “ensure Minnesota Governor this 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 not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a Gus Walz pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “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.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration Nonverbal Learning Disorder pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s Emotional Moment decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

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 influence its decisions.

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

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”