OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:08 PM – Friday, January 10, 2025
According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast this weekthe Biden administration forced Meta employees to censor certain COVID-19-related memes across their platforms.
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He also noted that the president's staff sometimes yelled and cursed at workers to remove content the administration disapproved of.
The 40-year-old CEO asked Logan to remove a meme depicting actor Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a television set in the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” from the White House. He explained that he was surprised to receive the call.
But it was certain captions pasted onto still images from the film that raised the administration's concerns.
The offending caption, which read, “Ten years from now, you'll be seeing ads saying you can receive benefits if you get the COVID-19 vaccine,'' troubled the Biden administration.
Apparently trying to gain favor with the incoming administration, Zuckerberg has appeared in global media this week as “fact-check” corrections entered by platforms often lead online users to believe the opposite. Previously, Meta's fact-checking staff and tools were significantly reduced. Most popular podcast.
Additionally, Mehta also announced that all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programming was canceled with immediate effect on the same day the Logan episode aired. Following the Supreme Court's ruling that racial and sex discrimination should not be permitted or encouraged. Axios It first revealed an internal memo informing Meta staff that the action was taken due to a change in the “legal and policy landscape” related to DEI.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the meme is “kind of a class action lawsuit type of meme” and that he personally sees it as a harmless political joke, ultimately explaining why the Biden administration is so negative about it. He explained that he was confused as to why he had such a reaction.
Zuckerberg went on to claim that in response to instructions to remove the meme from the platform, he and his team told the Biden administration, “No, we're not going to remove humor.” .
Zuckerberg also explained how Biden's team will encourage Meta officials to exclude factual information, such as possible negative effects from coronavirus vaccines.
“Everything that says vaccines are effective; [bad] It has to be removed because it has side effects,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the White House was under “extreme pressure to remove things that were honestly true.”
“Basically, we got to the point where we said, 'No, we're not going to deny the truth,'” Zuckerberg continued. “That's strange.”
Although it wasn't featured in the podcast, the National Library of Medicine website run by the National Institutes of Health says: reported some very concerning information Regarding myocarditis and the new coronavirus infection vaccine.
“We found that the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS following the 2021 COVID-19 vaccine was 223 times the average for all vaccines combined over the past 30 years; This represents a 2500% increase in absolute numbers reported in the first year of the campaign when compared to historical values for myocarditis in young people (50%) and men (69%). A total of 76% of cases resulted in emergency treatment and hospitalization.Of the total number of myocarditis cases, 92 (3%) died after the second dose. This is more likely to occur (pp
For much of the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden administration sought to minimize myocarditis, a dangerous heart disease associated with vaccines developed to fight the virus.
Ahead of Friday afternoon's release, Mr. Rogan did not reveal in advance that Mr. Zuckerberg would appear, as is customary for his podcast.
The interview received over 200,000 views on YouTube within 45 minutes. As of January 10th at 4:41pm PT, this episode has been played a total of 1,450,972 times, including plays on popular music/podcast platform Spotify, where Logan's episode is also uploaded. All times are not included.
Mr. Zuckerberg said on Friday's episode that Mr. Biden's public statements about how social media memes that contradict his own theories about the pandemic are “killing people” are Mr. Zuckerberg's strategy against censorship based on presidential orders. He said it was a turning point.
“All the different agencies and departments of the government have just started investigating and tracking us,” he added.
“It was brutal, brutal.”
Logan countered that the Biden administration's threat to remove content “sounds illegal” and may violate online users' First Amendment rights to free speech.
“And you didn't kill anyone,” Logan pointed out. He went on to say that this bizarre request was clearly a “massive overreach” on the part of the federal government.
“This is what this whole thing is about: suppressing so much information about what people should do, whether they believe in vaccines or not.”
“Did you record that call? God, I want to hear it,” Logan continued.
“They were suppressing things like this because they didn't want people to think they could get away with not getting the vaccine. It's really crazy,” he claimed. “That scared a lot of people.”
The Meta boss has also made a number of public statements about censorship in recent months, including shockingly admitting in August that he was feeling “pressure” to comply with the Biden administration's demands.
Zuckerberg donated $1 million to President Trump's inaugural fund after the 2024 presidential election in November.
“We're going back to basics and focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying policies, and restoring freedom of expression on our platforms,” he said.
“More specifically, starting in the United States, we are eliminating fact checkers and replacing them with community notes similar to X,” Zuckerberg continued.
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