An heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of praise and support, but it has at the same time led to nasty bullying attacks online.

An heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of praise and support, but it has at the same time led to nasty bullying attacks online.

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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, 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 influence he felt in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” some 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 government from either side – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July of 2021 that social media platforms 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 spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”

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

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

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter 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 story.

Zuckerberg said 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 changed its policies and processes 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 intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his goal is to be “impartial” so he will not make “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 pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media giant and policymakers to little effect.

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

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate 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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