Aug 27 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms ( META ) CEO Mark

Zuckerberg said senior officials in the Biden administration had

pressured his social media company to censor COVID-19 content

during the pandemic, adding that he would push back if this were

to happen again.

In a letter dated Aug. 26, Zuckerberg told the judiciary

committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that he regretted

not speaking up about this pressure earlier, as well as some

decisions the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner had made

around removing certain content.

"In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration,

including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for

months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and

satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when

we didn't agree," Zuckerberg wrote in the letter, which was

posted by the Committee on the Judiciary on its Facebook page.

"I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret

we were not more outspoken about it," he wrote. "I also think we

made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new

information, we wouldn't make today."

The White House and Meta did not respond to a request for

comment outside U.S. business hours.

The letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the

committee and a Republican. In its Facebook post, the committee

called the letter a "big win for free speech" and said that

Zuckerberg had admitted that "Facebook censored Americans".

In the letter, Zuckerberg also said he would not make any

contributions to support electoral infrastructure in this year's

presidential election so as to "not play a role one way or

another" in the November vote.

During the last election, which was held in 2020 during the

pandemic, the billionaire contributed $400 million via the Chan

Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropy venture with his wife,

to support election infrastructure, a move that drew criticism

and lawsuits from some groups that said the move was partisan.