The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time led to ugly bullying attacks on the internet.
The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of admiration and support, but it has at the same time led to ugly bullying attacks on the internet.
Blog Article
Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire.
“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the White House, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.
In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” 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,” 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 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 of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.
Though Biden later walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”
A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”
“Our position 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 also noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.
That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the story.
Zuckerberg stated 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 “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”
“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg said the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He said his aim is to be “impartial” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”
The GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and claimed Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration influenced Facebook to restrict American content, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to bridge the divide between his social media company and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained that the company ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.
In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are outsourced, 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked 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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