The emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has triggered a wave of admiration and support, but it has also provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

The emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has triggered a wave of admiration and support, but it has also provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

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Mark Zuckerberg stated in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was urged by the White House in 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as 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 experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in that year 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 Administration from either side – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”

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

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and other private actors should consider 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 warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

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 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 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting 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.” He said his goal is to be “neutral” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed 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 examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg acknowledged 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 Facebook’s 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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”
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