In an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” released Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a picture of Biden administration officials berating Facebook staff during requests to remove certain content from the social media platform.
“Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call our team and yell and swear at them,” Zuckerberg told podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan. “It got to a point where we thought, 'No, we're not going to, we're not going to put down things that are true. That's ridiculous.'”
The White House did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment on Zuckerberg's comments.
It's not the first time the Facebook co-founder has said government officials have pressured the company to remove posts.
In a letter last year to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg said the White House “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to remove “certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”
Zuckerberg said Meta-owned Facebook sometimes agreed, while suggesting other decisions would be made in the future. He said the company “made some choices that, with hindsight and new information, we wouldn't make today.”
The White House responded in a statement at the time, saying: “When faced with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe that technology companies and other private actors should consider the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about the information they present.”
Podcaster Joe Rogan.
During Rogan's show, Zuckerberg said the government had asked Facebook to remove a meme from its platform that showed actor Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV screen advertising a class action lawsuit for people who had once taken the Covid vaccine .
“They said, 'No, you have to take that away,'” Zuckerberg said, adding, “We said, 'No, we're not going to do that, we can't take away humor and satire. I'm not going to put down things that are true. ''
That meme was entered into evidence in an amicus brief filed by Republicans in Congress in a case that went to the Supreme Court in 2023.
In that case, the plaintiffs, including Louisiana, Missouri and several Facebook users whose posts were deleted or downgraded, sought to block government officials from communicating with social media companies.
The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the lawsuit in a 6-3 ruling, saying in part that there was sufficient evidence that platforms moderated content without government intervention.
“In fact, the platforms, operating independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content moderation policies before the government defendants became involved,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her opinion.
Zuckerberg's comments on Rogan's podcast come days after he announced that Meta would end its fact-checking program and replace it with a community-driven structure similar to the Community Notes system on rules regarding political content.
Zuckerberg is one of several tech moguls, reportedly including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, whose companies have pledged to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
