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 with celebrity podcaster and UFC host Joe Rogan.
Zuckerberg claimed the administration had become “extreme” about 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.”
The statements come after Meta recently made radical changes to its content moderation policy, moving to a community-oriented model comparable to Elon Musk’s X, instead of using third-party fact-checkers. It also started to recommend political content in the US. Zuckerberg defended the changing moderation style and described Meta’s old moderation model as like “something out of 1984,” a famous 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 the president-elect. 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.”
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Zuckerberg also broadly expressed support for Trump, saying he was “optimistic” Trump would be good for the U.S. 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 has announced in recent weeks. The company has also decided to roll back much 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 the upcoming inauguration, alongside other big tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber.
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About Will McCurdy
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