The coronavirus|Meta's future

The White House: Encourages Responsibility to Protect the People

The Biden administration admits it pressured Facebook's parent company Meta to delete certain posts about covid-19 from the platform during the pandemic.

In a comment to the Financial Times, a White House spokesperson said the administration "encourages responsible actions to protect public health and safety" as the United States faces a deadly pandemic.

- We think that technology companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg criticizes the pressure the White House put on the company and says he regrets some of the concessions Facebook made.

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Zuckerberg: The White House wanted us to delete covid posts

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims that the White House pressured Facebook to "censor certain covid 19 content, including humor and satire" for several months during the pandemic.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg is critical of the pressure put on the US government. He also regrets some of the decisions Facebook made.

"I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any administration in any direction — and we stand ready to resist if such a thing happens again," he writes.

He also regrets that content from the New York Post about Hunter Biden's laptop was hidden before the 2020 US election. It has later turned out that it was not Russian disinformation and the story should not have been "reduced", writes Zuckerberg.

The letter was sent as part of an ongoing investigation into content moderation in social media.