Zuckerberg tells Rogan the Biden administration pushed Meta to censor memes, satire about COVID

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is divulging new detail about the censorship pressure Facebook faced, telling podcast host Joe Rogan that the Biden administration had urged the company to block memes and satire related to COVID-19.

"These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse," Zuckerberg said on Rogan’s podcast Friday.

He said specifically that the Biden administration wanted Meta to take down a meme of actor Leonardo DiCaprio near a television and making a joke referencing a class-action lawsuit about the COVID-19 vaccine. 

"We said, 'No. We're not going to take down humor and satire. We're not going to take down things that are true,'" Zuckerberg said. 

There have been multiple reports during President Joe Biden's term of the White House colluding with Big Tech to censor "misinformation" about the COVID-19 virus and the vaccine.

It was reported at the start of 2023, that a White House official told Facebook to squash "general skepticism" about the vaccine.

"All these different agencies and branches of government started coming after our company. It was brutal," Zuckerberg said.