Washington DC [US], January 11 : Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Friday that the Biden administration coerced Facebook into censoring content around COVID-19 vaccines.
Zuckerberg made the statement at the Joe Rogan Podcast.
During the interview spanning several topics, Zuckerberg spoke about the issue of government censorship and noted, "This hit the most extreme. I'd say it was during the Biden Administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program. Now I'm generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines, I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative but I think that while they're trying to push that program they also tried to censor anyone who was arguing against it".
"They pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true. I mean, they basically pushed us and said, 'You know anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you need to take down' and I was just like well we're not going to do that'", Zuckerberg added.
He said that people in the Biden Administration told him "to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects".
Referring to the investigation and committee set up to look into the government censorship, Mark Zuckerberg said, "We produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain. I mean these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse".
Zuckerberg further added, "It just got to this point where we were like, no, we're not gonna take down true things. That's ridiculous. They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something, you're going to see an ad that says, okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you're eligible for this kind of payment, this sort of like class action lawsuit type meme. And they're like, no, you have to take that down. We said, no, we're not going to take down humour and satire. We're not going to take down true things. And then at some point, I guess, I don't know, it flipped a bit. I mean, Biden gave some statement at some point, I don't know if it was a press conference or to some journalists where he was like, these guys are killing people. And, and, I don't know, then like all these different agencies and branches of government just like started investigating coming after our company. It was, it was brutal. It was brutal."
In his attempt to further democratise Facebook to ensure freedom online, Zuckerberg announced earlier that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, was closing its censor-susceptible fact-checking shop in the US and replacing it with a user-fueled "Community Notes" system like that used by X, the New York Post noted.
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