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

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

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Meta's CEO 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 humor and satire.

“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, such as the administration, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure 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 “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I strongly believe 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 occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden remarked in July of 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these remarks, 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 clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account 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 potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 election.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging Biden family 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 hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

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 House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources 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 members 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 censored Americans, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of 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 little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he held that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he stated Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants 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 said, “to establish 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, “since no plaintiff met this burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”
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