Zuckerberg Reveals US Government Pressured Facebook to Censor COVID Vaccine Content

Photo : X / @bosunatiklama

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that the Biden administration pushed Facebook to remove posts about Covid-19 vaccines, especially those that talked about possible side effects. He said this during an interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast.

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Zuckerberg explained that although he supported the vaccine, he did not agree with how the government tried to stop people from sharing their opinions about it. "This was the most extreme case during the Biden Administration when they were pushing the vaccine program," he said. "I think vaccines are mostly good, but they also tried to stop anyone who spoke against it."

Zuckerberg said the government told Facebook to take down posts that mentioned the possible side effects of vaccines, even if those posts were true. He added, “They told us to take down anything that said vaccines might have side effects. But we said, 'We’re not going to do that.'”

He also mentioned that people from the Biden administration would call his team and get angry. “They would scream and curse at our team,” Zuckerberg said.

One example of this pressure was a meme about a possible lawsuit for Covid vaccine side effects. Facebook refused to take it down. Zuckerberg said, “We said we won’t take down jokes or true things.”

Zuckerberg also said that things got worse when President Biden made a statement saying that misinformation was harming people. “After that, government agencies started investigating us. It was really tough,” Zuckerberg said.

In response to this, Zuckerberg said Meta decided to stop using its old way of checking facts and introduced a new system called “Community Notes.” This system lets users help decide what content should be removed, much like how X (formerly Twitter) handles it.

This situation shows the ongoing debate about freedom of speech, online content, and how much the government should influence what people can say online.