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 disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as satirical and humorous posts.
“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, constantly urged our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical content, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg noted.
In his communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 2021 was “wrong” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. He further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” some 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 compromise 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 stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding 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 White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”
“Our stance has been consistent and clear: we believe tech companies and other private actors 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 further noted 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 reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging the Biden family of corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.
Zuckerberg stated 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 said 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 authorities across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.
Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” Zuckerberg stated his goal 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 said Zuckerberg “has 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 accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta enforces its rules impartially, the perception has become entrenched in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.
In a 2020 Senate hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are liberal. 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 contractors, 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 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 censoring conservative voices on social media had no standing.
In the majority opinion, 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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