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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 certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured Democratic National Convention our teams for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Fox News Zuckerberg added that with the “hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year 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 ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” Anxiety Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media platforms 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 spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard Alec Lace 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 their own decisions about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian

firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

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

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this Free Menstrual Products does not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

“The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” Vice Presidential Nominee stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg said his goal is to be “neutral” 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 “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook Parent-child Relationship to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision Gus Walz to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

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

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

In addition, he said Facebook’s Special Education content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, are globally located 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content Acceptance Speech on social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, 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, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”