An emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a wave of admiration and support, but it has at the same time provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.
An emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a wave of admiration and support, but it has at the same time provoked ugly bullying attacks on the internet.
Blog Article
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that Meta was influenced by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.
“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.
In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in that year that “wouldn’t be made today.”
“Like I told our teams back then, I strongly believe that we should not lower our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.
President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.
Though Biden later revised these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “major public health risk.”
A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”
“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 their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.
Zuckerberg further mentioned in the letter that the FBI warned his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.
That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post accusing the Biden family of 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 “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 House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.”
“The goal here was to make sure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan 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 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 throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.
In testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. But he held 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 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 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 standing.
In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must show 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
35 |
36 |
37 |
38 |
39 |
40 |
41 |
42 |
43 |
44 |
45 |
46 |
47 |
48 |
49 |
50 |
51 |
52 |
53 |
54 |
55 |
56 |
57 |
58 |
59 |
60 |
61 |
62 |
63 |
64 |
65 |
66 |
67 |