An heartfelt exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time led to ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

An heartfelt exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time led to ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was pressured by the Biden administration in 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” some 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 – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked in July of 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 stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

A White House spokesperson replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the report.

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

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

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

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

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg said 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 “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish 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, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”
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