An heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a flood of praise and approval, but it has also led to nasty incidents of bullying online.
An heartfelt moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a flood of praise and approval, but it has also led to nasty incidents of bullying online.
Blog Article
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the Biden administration in the year 2021 to limit certain COVID-19 content, including satirical and humorous posts.
“In the year 2021, senior members from the Biden Administration, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for an extended period 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 “inappropriate” and he feels regretful that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. Zuckerberg added that with the “benefit of 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 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, ” he wrote.
President Biden remarked in July 2021 that social media networks are “causing harm” with misinformation about 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 “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 stance has been consistent and clear: we think tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present, ” according to the spokesperson.
Zuckerberg also mentioned 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 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 hindsight, we should not have reduced its visibility.”
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 communication to the 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 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 censor Americans, Facebook restricted content, and Facebook throttled 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 prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has stressed that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the narrative has become entrenched 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 little effect.
In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg acknowledged that many of Facebook’s staff are left-leaning. 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 globally located 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, in a win for the White House, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the claimants in a case accusing the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.
In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to prove standing, the plaintiffs must show 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 seek a preliminary injunction.”
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