An heartfelt exchange 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 ugly bullying attacks online.
An heartfelt exchange 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 ugly 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 influenced by the White House in the year 2021 to restrict content related to COVID-19, such as humor and satire.
“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the White House, constantly urged our teams for an extended period to censor certain COVID-19 content, such as 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 “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “hindsight and new information,” some decisions made in that year 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 from either side – and we’re prepared to resist if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.
President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about 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 White House spokesperson responded to Zuckerberg’s letter, saying the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible actions to protect public health and safety.”
“Our position has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices 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, Zuckerberg said, his team temporarily demoted a New York Post report accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review 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 changed its policies and processes to “ensure this does not recur” and will not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.
In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”
“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the resources they needed to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said 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 stated his aim is to be “neutral” so he will not make “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 censored Americans, and Facebook limited 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 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 testimony before Congress in the past years, Zuckerberg has sought to close the gap between his social media giant and regulators to little effect.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. But he maintained 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 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”
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