The emotional moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a wave of praise and approval, but it has also provoked nasty incidents of bullying on the internet.

The emotional moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a wave of praise and approval, but it has also provoked nasty incidents of bullying 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 urged by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor content related to COVID-19, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as the White House, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated that with the “benefit of 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 strongly believe 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation surrounding 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, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors 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 further mentioned 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, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, 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 letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his aim is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee shared the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. 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 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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 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 said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to request a preliminary injunction.”
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