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.

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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 influenced by the White House in 2021 to restrict certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, such as the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the influence he experienced in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more vocal. He added that with the “benefit of 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 lower our content standards due to pressure from any government in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July of 2021 that social media networks are “killing people” with misinformation surrounding the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said at the time that misinformation spread on social media was a “serious threat to public health.”

A spokesperson from the White House replied to Zuckerberg’s letter, 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 private entities should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making their own decisions about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg further mentioned in the communication that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian firm Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, Zuckerberg said, his team reduced the visibility of reporting from the New York Post accusing Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could assess the story.

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 assisted “electoral infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election jurisdictions across the country had the necessary resources to help people vote safely during a pandemic,” said the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but said “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He said his goal is to be “impartial” 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 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 claimed Facebook and other large technology platforms of being biased against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically scrutinized Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In Congressional testimony in the past years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and regulators to limited success.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s staff are liberal. But he maintained that the company takes care not to allow political bias to seep into decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, 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, 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 legal standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “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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