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

An heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked 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 pressured by the Biden administration in 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the administration, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the influence he felt in 2021 was “wrong” 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,” 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 Administration in either direction – 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 “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 “serious threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we think tech companies and private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about potential Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post accusing 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 retrospect, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since changed its policies and processes to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

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

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

Zuckerberg said the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg said his aim is to be “neutral” 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 “just 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 claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. 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 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, in a victory for the administration, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show 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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