The 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 provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

The 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 provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.

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Mark Zuckerberg disclosed in a communication to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was urged by the White House in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

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

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I feel strongly 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 of 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation posted 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 encouraging “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 spokesperson.

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

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

Zuckerberg stated that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the letter 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 jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his aim 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 “just 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 been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

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

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s employees 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 globally located and “our global team better represents the diversity of the community we serve than just the full-time employee base in our headquarters in the Bay Area.”

In June of this year, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal 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 traceable 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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