Zuckerberg: Biden Admin Officials Would 'Scream' and 'Curse' at Facebook Staff
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has alleged that Biden administration officials would “scream” and “curse” at Facebook staff in an attempt to remove content from the platform.
In an interview on Joe Rogan's podcast, Zuckerberg claimed the administration became “extreme” when asking for posts to be taken down during the 2021 rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. The CEO admitted that he had "no personal involvement" in these conversations and there are no recordings, though he did claim there "are emails."
“While they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “And they pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true.”
In late 2020, as the US was preparing to roll out COVID-19 vaccines, Facebook said it would remove misinformation about them, including conspiracy theories that said the treatments would require people to get microchipped, as well as false claims “about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects,” of the new vaccines. Two years later, it said it was thinking about softening its approach and asked its Oversight Board for a recommendation on whether it should change the COVID-19 misinformation removal policy.
The board later recommended that "as long as the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to declare COVID-19 an international public health emergency, Meta should maintain its current policy," adding: "The Board strongly recommends that Meta publish information on government requests to remove COVID-19 content, take action to support independent research of its platforms, examine the link between its platforms’ architecture and misinformation, and promote understanding around COVID-19 misinformation globally."
In August 2024, Zuckerberg said the Biden administration pressured his social media platforms to "censor" user posts about the COVID-19 pandemic. "It was our decision whether or not to take content down, [but] we made some choices that...we wouldn't make today," Zuckerberg said in a letter to the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee.
In response, the White House said it "encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety." Some saw Zuckerberg's letter as Meta trying to stay in the good graces of GOP lawmakers who were probing the social networks over alleged government censorship.
Zuckerberg's statements on Rogan, meanwhile, come after Meta moved to a community-oriented fact-checking model comparable to Elon Musk's X, instead of using third-party fact-checkers. It also returned to recommending political content in the US. Zuckerberg defended the change and described Meta’s old moderation model as like "something out of 1984," George Orwell's novel about a man living in an oppressive authoritarian regime.
“I think people just felt like the fact-checkers were too biased, not necessarily even so much in what they ruled — although sometimes I think people would disagree with that,” said Zuckerberg. “A lot of the time, it was just what types of things they chose to even go and fact-check in the first place.”
The Meta CEO denied that recent changes to his company's content moderation strategy were linked to the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump. He said there is "no good time" to make these kinds of changes and denied that the changes were "a purely political thing."
“The good thing about doing it after the election is you get to take this cultural pulse,” he said. “We try to have policies that reflect mainstream discourse.”
Zuckerberg also broadly expressed support for Trump, saying he's "optimistic" Trump would be good for the US tech industry and that he "wants America to win," and may support US tech firms in the face of issues like massive fines from the European Union.
Changes to content moderation aren’t the only major policy shifts Meta announced in recent weeks. The company also decided to roll back many of its DEI programs. Though Zuckerberg didn’t explicitly comment on the decision to scale back its DEI strategy, he told Rogan he is done with "culturally neutered" elements of corporate America.
Meta has donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund, alongside other big tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber.