The heartfelt exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a wave of admiration and support, but it has also provoked ugly incidents of bullying on the internet.

The heartfelt exchange between Tim Walz and his teenage son, Gus, has sparked a wave of admiration and support, but it has also provoked ugly incidents of bullying on the internet.

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Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday that his company was urged by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, including satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, such as the administration, constantly urged our teams for months to remove certain COVID-19 content, such as humor and satire, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his communication to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg described that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that Meta, the parent of Facebook & Instagram, was not more vocal. Zuckerberg further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were 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 Administration from either side – and we’re prepared to resist 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 walked back these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

A spokesperson from the White House responded to Zuckerberg’s communication, stating the administration at the time was encouraging “responsible measures to safeguard public health.”

“Our stance has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the White House representative.

Zuckerberg further noted in the communication that the FBI alerted his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team reduced the visibility of a New York Post report alleging 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 hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”

Meta has since updated its policies and procedures to “ensure this does not recur” and will no longer demote content in the US while waiting for fact-checkers.

In the letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will not repeat actions he took in the year 2020 when he helped support “electoral infrastructure.”

“The idea here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” said 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 “impartial” so he will not make “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP representatives on the House Judiciary Committee posted the letter on X and said Zuckerberg “just admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Facebook to censor Americans, Facebook censored Americans, and Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who have claimed Facebook and other major tech 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 examined Facebook’s decision to restrict 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 ensures political bias does not influence its decisions.

In addition, he said Facebook’s content moderators, many of whom are contractors, are globally located 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 win for the White House, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the plaintiffs 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 prove standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the immediate future, they will suffer an injury that is directly linked to a government defendant.” Coney Barrett continued, “because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”
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