The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has sparked a flood of praise and support, but it has at the same time led to nasty bullying attacks online.
The heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old 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 disclosed in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that Meta was pressured by the White House in the year 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire.
“In the year 2021, senior officials from the Biden White House, including the White House, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg noted.
In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he experienced in 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 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, ” Zuckerberg wrote.
President Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.
Though Biden later walked back these comments, 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 replied to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was promoting “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”
“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the public, while making their own decisions about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.
Zuckerberg also mentioned in the letter that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the 2020 election.
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 assess the report.
Zuckerberg said that since then, it has “been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
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 House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “electoral infrastructure.”
“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the resources they needed to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” stated 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.” He 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 said 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 been under 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 gained a firm foothold in conservative communities. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to restrict a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
In Congressional testimony in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to bridge the divide between his social media company 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 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 ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case alleging the federal government of censoring conservative voices on social media had no legal standing.
Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will experience harm 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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