The vast amount of people that were censored and banned from Meta platforms for expressing truthful information won’t be quick to forgive Mark Zuckerberg, even as his does a PR blitz for his new “free speech” push. But during an appearance today on The Joe Rogan Experience, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the Biden administration pressured him to censor memes related to the COVID-19 pandemic and constantly pushed for the censorship of truthful speech critical of the Covid-19 vaccines. The Meta CEO recounted how the White House would “call up our team and scream at them and curse” over content shared on social media.
Zuckerberg explained that his resistance to these demands solidified when officials pushed for the removal of a meme featuring Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV, an image taken from the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The meme’s caption read, “10 years from now you’re going to see an ad that says if you took a Covid vaccine you’d be eligible for a payment,” which Zuckerberg described as resembling a typical class-action lawsuit joke.
Despite pressure to delete the post, Zuckerberg stated, “No we’re not we’re not going to take down humor,” emphasizing his team’s alleged stance on preserving content that, while humorous, was not false. (Note: Facebook has censored content similar to this many times before.)
“Basically, it just got to this point where we were like no, we’re not going to take down things that are true,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I mean, they basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down,” Zuckerberg said. “And I was just like, well, we’re not going to do that. Like, we’re clearly not going to do that. I mean, that is kind of inarguably true.”
Rogan, intrigued by the tension between Meta and the administration, especially after hearing the Biden administration staffers “screamed and cursed” at Meta employees, asked, “Did you record any of those phone calls? God, I want to listen.” No recordings were made but there are plenty of emails that reveal just how persistent the Biden administration was in pushing for censorship.
Zuckerberg’s comments come amid increasing scrutiny of his company’s content moderation policies. This latest revelation follows his earlier acknowledgment in August that he was “pressured” by the Biden administration to comply with their censorship requests.
Zuckerberg pointed to a pivotal moment in his approach to content moderation when President Biden publicly accused social media platforms of spreading harmful misinformation, claiming they were “killing people.” Reflecting on the aftermath, Zuckerberg shared, “All these different agencies and branches of government just started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal, brutal.”
Rogan criticized the government’s involvement, labeling it a “massive overstepping” and remarked, “And also, you weren’t killing people. This is the thing with all of this, they suppressed so much information about things that people should be doing, regardless of whether or not you believe in the vaccine.”
