The emotional moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a wave of praise and approval, but it has also provoked nasty incidents of bullying on the internet.

The emotional moment between Tim Walz and his 17-year-old son, Gus, has triggered a wave of praise and approval, but it has also provoked nasty incidents of bullying on the internet.

Blog Article

Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on recently that his company was pressured by the White House in 2021 to limit content related to COVID-19, such as satirical and humorous posts.

“In 2021, senior members from the Biden White House, including the administration, constantly urged our teams for months to censor some content about COVID-19, including satirical content, and showed significant frustration with our teams when we did not comply, ” Zuckerberg said.

In his letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said that the pressure he felt in 2021 was “inappropriate” and he regrets that his company, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, was not more outspoken. He further stated that with the “benefit of hindsight and new information,” there were decisions made in 2021 that “wouldn’t be made today.”

“Like I told our teams back then, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any government from either side – and we’re ready to push back if something like this occurs in the future, ” he wrote.

President Biden stated in July 2021 that social media platforms are “killing people” with misinformation about the pandemic.

Though Biden later revised these comments, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy stated at the time that misinformation posted on social media was a “major public health risk.”

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

“Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and private entities should consider the effects their actions have on the public, while making independent choices about the content they share, ” according to the spokesperson.

Zuckerberg also noted in the letter that the FBI warned his company about possible Russian disinformation regarding Hunter Biden and Burisma affecting the election in 2020.

That fall, he said, his team temporarily demoted reporting from the New York Post alleging Biden family corruption while their fact-checkers could review the story.

Zuckerberg stated 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 not reduce the visibility of content in the US pending fact-checking.

In the communication to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said he will avoid repeating the actions he took in the year 2020 when he assisted “election infrastructure.”

“The goal here was to ensure local election authorities across the country had the necessary resources to facilitate safe voting during a pandemic,” stated the Meta CEO.

Zuckerberg mentioned the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but acknowledged “some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.” He said his goal is to be “neutral” so will not be “a similar contribution this cycle.”

The GOP members 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 limited the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The Meta chief has long been under scrutiny from congressional Republicans, who have accused Facebook and other major tech platforms of being prejudiced against conservatives. While Zuckerberg has emphasized that Meta impartially enforces its rules, the perception has gained a firm foothold in conservative circles. Republican lawmakers have specifically examined Facebook’s decision to limit the circulation of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

In testimony before Congress in recent years, Zuckerberg has attempted to close the gap between his social media company and policymakers to little effect.

In a 2020 Senate session, Zuckerberg admitted that many of Facebook’s employees are left-leaning. But he held 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 “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 victory for the administration, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs in a case alleging the federal government of suppressing conservative content on social media had no standing.

In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “to establish 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.”
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
36 |

1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
32 |
33 |
34 |
35 |
36 |
37 |
38 |
39 |
40 |
41 |
42 |
43 |
44 |
45 |
46 |
47 |
48 |
49 |
50 |
51 |
52 |
53 |
54 |
55 |
56 |
57 |
58 |
59 |
60 |
61 |
62 |
63 |
64 |
65 |
66 |
67 |
68 |
69 |
70 |
71 |
72 |
73 |
74 |
75 |
76 |
77 |
78 |
79 |
80 |
81 |
82 |
83 |
84 |
85 |
86 |
87 |
88 |
89 |
90 |
91 |
92 |
93 |
94 |
95 |
96 |
97 |
98 |
99 |
100 |
101 |
102 |
103 |
104 |
105 |
106 |
107 |
108 |
109 |
110 |
111 |
112 |
113 |
114 |
115 |
116 |
117 |
118 |
119 |
120 |
121 |
122 |
123 |
124 |
125 |
126 |
127 |
128 |
129 |
130 |
131 |
132 |
133 |
134 |
135 |
136 |
137 |
138 |
139 |
140 |
141 |
142 |
143 |
144 |
145 |
146 |
147 |
148 |
149 |
150 |
151 |
152 |
153 |
154 |
155 |
156 |
157 |
158 |
159 |
160 |
161 |
162 |
163 |
164 |
165 |
166 |
167 |
168 |
169 |
170 |
171 |
172 |
173 |
174 |
175 |
176 |
177 |
178 |
179 |
180 |
181 |
182 |
183 |
184 |
185 |
186 |
187 |
188 |
189 |
190 |
191 |
192 |
193 |
194 |
195 |
196 |
197 |
198 |
199 |
200 |
201 |
202 |
203 |
204 |
205 |
206 |
207 |
208 |
209 |
210 |
211 |
212 |
213 |
214 |
215 |
216 |
217 |
218 |
219 |