The emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a flood of praise and support, but it has at the same time led to nasty bullying attacks online.
The emotional exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a flood of praise and support, but it has at the same time led to nasty bullying attacks online.
Blog Article
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a communication to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.
“In 2021, senior officials 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 Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he felt in the year 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”
“As I mentioned to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” Zuckerberg wrote.
President Biden stated 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 stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”
A White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”
“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions 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 the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the 2020 election.
That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.
Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “become clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
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 letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg stated he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral 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,” stated the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were intended to be neutral but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his goal is to be “neutral” 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 been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, 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 gained a firm foothold 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 company and policymakers to limited success.
In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained 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 victory for the administration, 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 legal standing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated, “to establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable 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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