(MENAFN- Live Mint) Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the Biden administration applied significant pressure on facebook to censor content related to COVID-19 vaccine side effects.“This hit the most extreme. I'd say it was during the Biden Administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program,” Zuckerberg said, speaking on The Joe Rogan Podcast, adding that while he supports vaccines, he was troubled by the demands.
He added,“I think that while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was arguing against it.”
“We're not going to do that”
“They pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true,” Zuckerberg explained, stating that the administration urged Facebook to remove posts discussing vaccine side effects, regardless of their truthfulness.“They basically said, 'Anything that says vaccines might have side effects, you need to take down.' And I was just like, well, we're not going to do that.”
Conflict over satire and memes
The tech entrepreneur highlighted specific examples, including resistance to removing humorous content.“They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio talking about class action lawsuits for vaccines 10 years from now,” Zuckerberg said.“We said, no, we're not going to take down humour and satire. We're not going to take down true things.”
Government backlash and investigations
Zuckerberg recounted how tensions escalated after public remarks by President Biden.“Biden gave some statement, saying these guys are killing people. 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,” he said.
Public disclosure of documents
Zuckerberg emphasised Meta 's transparency during investigations into government censorship.“We produced all these documents, and it's all in the public domain,” he said.“People from the Biden administration would call up our team, scream at them, and curse.”
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