The heartfelt 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 heartfelt 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 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 members from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to remove some content about COVID-19, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.

In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. He further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 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 from either side – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.

President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media platforms are “causing harm” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later walked back these remarks, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating 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 other private actors 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 2020 election.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could review the report.

Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures 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 stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “election infrastructure.”

“The idea 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.” Zuckerberg said his aim is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives 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 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 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 scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a report by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media company and regulators 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 outsourced, are based worldwide 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 ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will experience harm 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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