Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Judiciary Committee Monday that he now regrets the major role his company played not only in helping the Biden-Harris administration censor Americans' protected speech, but in suppressing critical information ahead of the 2020 election. While unwilling to acknowledge its impact on recent American elections, Zuckerberg also indicated he will be terminating his "Zuck Bucks" scheme — ostensibly to alleviate some lawmakers' concerns about deep-pocketed partisans' election interference. Although it's unclear whether Zuckerberg's admissions will be of any real-world consequence — impacting, for instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s censorship lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration — the committee nevertheless characterized his letter as a "big win for free speech." Suppressing dissenting voices Zuckerberg said in his damning letter addressed to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that in 2021, senior officials from the Biden-Harris administration, including the White House, "repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree." The committee has obtained ample evidence in recent months and years detailing the extent of Facebook's work with the Biden-Harris administration to silence criticism of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines, lockdown measures, and masking, along with other medically accurate information that undermined the Biden White House's preferred pandemic narrative, which it knew early on to be inaccurate. 'We own our decisions.' For instance, an April 2021 email circulated by a Facebook employee, ostensibly on behalf of Zuckerberg and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, noted that the Biden White House took issue with a "vaccine discouraging humorous meme," which it told the social media company to delete. Blaze News previously reported that the verboten meme in question used the "Pointing Rick Dalton" template, borrowing a still from the 2019 film "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character points out something on television. This meme, which the Biden White House wanted erased from the platform, was captioned, "10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear .... 'Did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled ...'" and was apparently shared over 385,000 times. Besides memes and medical facts, Facebook also dutifully censored content about the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, which is now the most credible account. In his Monday letter, Zuckerberg admitted that despite knowing the "government pressure was wrong" and that his company could have told the Biden-Harris administration to pound sand, the company decided anyway to oblige the state, take content down, and censor users. "Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of pressure," said Zuckerberg. While Facebook was more than willing to comply with the Democratic administration's demands, Zuckerberg — possibly cognizant that he may soon be dealing with a Republican administration — indicated that the company is "ready to push back if something like this happens again." Election interference Zuckerberg also acknowledged in his letter Facebook's suppression of an accurate report in the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton ahead of the 2020 election. "The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," wrote the Facebook CEO. "That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply." "It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," added Zuckerberg. Among the concerns raised in the New York Post's suppressed report was that a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter Biden for introducing him to Joe Biden about a year before Biden allegedly extorted the Eastern European country as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired. The report also hinted that Joe Biden, through his son and his own actions, may have been a compromised candidate and, at the very least, untruthful. 'Your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House.' While Facebook worked to suppress the report, elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump — including active elements of the security state — swooped in to shield Biden in the final weeks before the election, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy. Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden" but, more specifically, to help "him to win the election." Zuckerberg assured Jordan in his letter that Facebook, having helped deliver to Biden a firm grasp on the 2020 election-time narrative and possibly the White House, has since changed its policies and process "to make sure this doesn't happen again," noting that content is no longer temporarily demoted while so-called fact-checkers decide whether it's fit for public consumption. The Facebook CEO also addressed the contributions he made during the last presidential election to "support electoral infrastructure." Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped over $400 million into grants allegedly aimed at helping with election administration and voter accommodation. Critics have suggested that "Zuck Bucks" was alternatively a partisan scheme aimed at turning out more Democratic votes. "They were designed to be non-partisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities," wrote Zuckerberg. "Still, despite the analyses I've seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other. My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a arole. So I don't plan on making a similar contribution this cycle." "Zuck Bucks" may not be necessary in this election cycle, given that the federal government is actively working on fulfilling Biden's Executive Order 14019, which may prove far more effective at mobilizing Democratic voters. The response While the committee called the letter a "big win for free speech," Blaze News columnist Auron MacIntyre noted, "No, a win occurs when your enemies pay a price. Is someone going to jail? Is someone getting impeached? Is anyone even getting fined? No, you just got a confession that your enemies rigged the election and were rewarded with the White House." — (@) Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) similarly suggested that the letter was too little, too late, writing, "Facebook may have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential race. Four years later, we get a letter saying 'sorry.'" "Mark Zuckerberg comes clean and finally admits what everyone already knows he and META did to influence the 2020 election," wrote Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) Elon Musk responded to the letter, noting, "Sounds like a First Amendment violation." Podcaster Patrick Bet-David speculated that there were three possible reasons Zuckerberg would have made these admissions: "1. He's being honorable[;] 2. He's done with the Dem party[; and/or] 3. He's getting ahead of a whistleblower." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bowed out of the presidential race on Friday, leaving former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris the last two in the ring. In his highly anticipated speech, RFK criticized the Democratic Party’s abandonment of its core values and endorsed Trump, which resulted in many of his family members openly disparaging him on social media. “While democracy may still be alive at the grassroots, it has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly of all for me — the Democratic Party,” RFK said in his speech. While Sara Gonzales of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” is grateful to have him on Trump’s side, she’s not convinced his endorsement will sway independent voters. “It is interesting to think about what demographic his voters really are, because he’s all over the place with his policies,” Gonzales says. “He’s a crazy environmentalist, wants crazy climate change proposals — which you would associate with a radical leftist.” “But then also, he wants to totally reform Big Pharma and the FDA and the CDC,” she continues, “he’s a very obviously infamous vaccine skeptic.” Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is facing criticism from her own leftist supporters for not being “pro-Palestine” enough. “You have to imagine that the enthusiasm is not going to be there to get out on Election Day or during early voting and go cast your vote for Kamala,” Gonzales says. “Now, you may have these independents as well who, okay, maybe they can’t be bothered to vote for Trump, but do you really think they’re going to show up on Election Day and vote for Kamala Harris?” Eric July is in agreement. “Considering his history, he’s been a Democrat, and you think of the two, that’s where he’s going to pull from more,” he says. “So, either it is a wash considering everything that you just said or it does benefit Trump more than anything.” Want more from Sara Gonzales?To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

In recent history, it feels like if a videogame isn't delayed at some point during its pre-launch cycle, something's gone wrong. There's the infamous Cyberpunk 2077, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2, then my all-time favorite, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. Where there's a game, there's often a delay. Thankfully, these are normally just for a few months, but Kien, an obscure pixel platformer built for the Game Boy Advance was delayed for 22 years, finally releasing in cartridge form back in July, 2024. The developer, AgeofGames, however, isn't done, as it's lready moved onto a brand new project - Homini et Armi: The End of Knights. Continue reading Studio that delayed its game for 22 years reveals new strategy sim MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best turn-based strategy games, Best war games, Best strategy games

One of AMD’s forthcoming new GPUs has seemingly just appeared in the Geekbench result browser, with the listing revealing some of the key specs of this new graphics card. It looks as though the first AMD Radeon 8000 GPUs are now being tested prior to launch, giving us our first glimpse of what could be in store with the new series based on the RDNA 4 architecture. If this listing is right, though, then the specs look pretty underwhelming. Current rumors already point to AMD focusing on mid-range performance with its new Radeon RX 8000 lineup, and leaving the flagship best graphics card title to Nvidia. This wouldn’t be the first time AMD took this strategy either, with its Vega and first-gen RDNA GPUs also sitting below Nvidia’s top-end options at the time. Continue reading This new AMD Radeon 8000 GPU just had its specs leaked MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Ryzen 7 7800X3D review, Best gaming CPU, Radeon RX 7800 XT review

HA! So THIS Is Why Chris Hayes and Other Lefty Mouth-Breathers Are Crying About the Electoral College

WOW! Gold Star Families' Request of Trump Should Scare the Hell Out of Kamala Harris and ALL Democrats

Tuesday Morning Minute

Kamala Harris' Latest Interview Ploy Shows How Terrified She Is

Image: The Verge While we wait for a Switch 2 announcement, Nintendo is showing off 40 minutes of game announcements from indie developers and third-party partners. Continue reading…

Phones have been getting wet for years — but now they’re getting better at dealing with it. | Photo: The Verge Millions of viewers are turning to videos to get the water out of their phones. I tried to figure out whether they actually work. Continue reading…