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

The heartfelt exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked 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 U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was influenced by the White House in 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, constantly urged our teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in the year 2021 was “wrong” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook & 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 feel strongly that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any government in either direction – 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 “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated 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 promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our position has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and 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 “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 ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting 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.” He stated his goal is to be “impartial” 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 “has admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, 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 the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, 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 based worldwide 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 decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no legal standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near 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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