The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was influenced by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, 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 said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

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

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

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

“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also mentioned in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

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

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

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to make sure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources 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 stated his aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, 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 biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants 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 stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury 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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