Washington DC [US], January 11 (HBTV): Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Friday that the Biden administration coerced Facebook into censoring content related to COVID-19 vaccines.

Zuckerberg made the statement during an interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast. He discussed government censorship and noted, "This hit the most extreme. I'd say it was during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program. Now, I'm generally pretty pro rolling out vaccines. I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative, but I think that while they're trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was arguing against it."

He continued, "They pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true. I mean, they basically pushed us and said, 'You know anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you need to take down,' and I was just like, well we're not going to do that."

Zuckerberg stated that officials from the Biden administration told him to take down content discussing vaccine side effects. He added, "We produced all these documents and it's all in the public domain. I mean, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse."

He further described how the situation escalated, saying, "It just got to this point where we were like, no, we're not gonna take down true things. That's ridiculous. They want us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV talking about how 10 years from now or something, you're going to see an ad that says, okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you're eligible for this kind of payment, this sort of like class action lawsuit type meme. And they're like, no, you have to take that down. We said, no, we're not going to take down humour and satire. We're not going to take down true things."

Zuckerberg explained that the situation shifted when President Biden publicly blamed social media platforms for spreading harmful content. "Biden gave some statement at some point, I don't know if it was a press conference or to some journalists, where he was like, these guys are killing people. And, I don't know, then like all these different agencies and branches of government just like started investigating and coming after our company. It was, it was brutal. It was brutal."

In an effort to further democratize Facebook and ensure freedom online, Zuckerberg also announced earlier that Meta would close its censor-susceptible fact-checking operation in the US and replace it with a user-fueled "Community Notes" system, similar to that used by X, as reported by the New York Post.

(ANI)