Mark Zuckerberg says the the Biden administration forced Meta to censor a Covid meme - and said the president's staff would scream and swear at his workers to remove content they didn't like.
The Meta chief, 40, told Joe Rogan he was stunned when the White House got in touch to demand a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV in his movie Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was taken down.
They were irritated by the caption added to it, which read: '10 years from now you're going to see an ad that says if you took a Covid vaccine you'd be eligible for a payment.'
Zuckerberg's appearance on the podcast comes moves to make inroads with the incoming Trump administration, including dramatically axing Meta's team of fact-checkers this week.
And on the same day the Rogan episode dropped, Meta revealed they had terminated all DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs effective immediately.
Axios first reported an internal memo explained to staff the decision was made because of a changing 'legal and policy landscape' about DEI in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted.
Zuckerberg said the meme was 'sort of like a class action lawsuit type meme' and personally deemed it little more than a harmless political joke.
After being told to take down the meme, Zuckerberg claimed he and his team responded: 'No we're not we're not going to take down humor.'
Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that the Biden administration tried to force him to censor a meme about the Covid-19 pandemic in a surprise appearance on the popular podcast
The Meta chief said the White House would 'call up our team and scream at them and curse' over social media memes
Zuckerberg said Biden wanted him to take down a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV, seemingly from the film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Shockingly, Zuckerberg also told of how Biden's staff would demand the platform censor information that was accurate, including that Covid vaccines can cause side effects.
Zuckerberg said the White House 'pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true', and 'said anything that says vaccines have side effects, you need to take down.'
'Basically, it just got to this point where we were like no, we're not going to take down things that are true,' Zuckerberg said. 'That's ridiculous.'
The Biden administration spent much of the Covid crisis trying to downplay a rare but serious heart condition called myocarditis that was linked to vaccines developed to tackle the virus.
As is typical with Rogan's podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian made no early announcement of Zuckerberg's appearance before it was published on Friday afternoon.
The interview quickly racked up over 200,000 views in under 45 minutes on YouTube.
Rogan is widely regarded as the world's most successful podcaster whose A-List interviews regularly set the news agenda.
In Friday's episode, Zuckerberg said a turning point for his approach to censorship under Biden came when the president publicly said social media memes combatting his pandemic narrative were 'killing people.'
'All these different agencies and branches of government just started investigating and coming after our company,' he said.
'It was brutal, brutal.'
Zuckerberg added that the threats from the Biden administration to take down content 'sounds illegal' and potentially breached posters First Amendment right to free speech.
Rogan said the demands were clearly a 'massive overstepping' from the federal government, adding: 'And also, you weren't killing people.
'This is the thing with all of this, they suppressed so much information about things that people should be doing, regardless of whether or not you believe in the vaccine.'
'Did you record any of those phone calls? God, I want to listen,' he added.
Rogan seemed stunned by Zuckerberg's claims over the 'brutal' approach the Biden administration took to censorship during the pandemic
Zuckerberg claimed that as soon as he pushed back on Biden's demands, 'all these different agencies and branches of government just started investigating and coming after our company'
The episode came amid Zuckerberg's apparent attempt to make inroads with the incoming administration of Donald Trump (pictured together in September 2019)
Rogan, who was an outspoken sceptic of the Covid-19 vaccine, seemed stunned by Zuckerberg's claims over the 'brutal' approach the Biden administration took to censorship during the pandemic.
The comedian and podcaster argued that one of the most striking aspects was the White House's suppression of health remedies that would benefit people's daily lives anyway.
'They were suppressing this stuff because they didn't want people to think that you could get away with not taking the vaccine, which is really crazy' he argued.
'It scared the s*** out of a lot of people.'
Zuckerberg recalled that following Donald Trump's first presidential election victory in 2016, he felt he got swept up in the media mania over the Republican's surprise victory.
That centered on claims Zuckerberg's companies Facebook and Instagram had laundered Russian lies about Hillary Clinton to help swing the election for Trump.
'In retrospect I deferred too much to the critique from the media on what we should do,' he admitted.
'And since then, I think generally trust in media has fallen off a cliff.'
The Meta chief has made string of public statements in recent months over censorship, including a shock admission in August that he was 'pressured' by the Biden administration to carry out their demands.
After publicly donating to Trump's inauguration fund following November's election, Zuckerberg surprised many this week as he shared a five-minute video announcing the end of 'fact checking' on Meta platforms.
'We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,' he said.
'More specifically, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the US.'
Like X, the shift will allow users on the sites to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context.
The missive appears to be part of a full court press to change Meta, social media and the internet itself for the second Trump era.
