Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has claimed 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 gone “extreme” in demanding the posts be removed during the 2021 COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The CEO admitted he had “no personal involvement” in these conversations and no recordings, though he claimed that “there is email”.
“While they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who basically argued against it,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “And they pushed us very hard to remove things that were honestly 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 recommending political content in the US. Zuckerberg defended the change in moderation style and described Meta’s old moderation model as “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 very biased, not necessarily so much in what they ruled — although sometimes I think people would disagree with that,” Zuckerberg said. “A lot of times, it was just what kind of things they chose to go and fact-check in the first place.”
Meta’s CEO denied that recent changes to his company’s moderated content strategy were related to the upcoming inauguration of the president-elect. He said there is no “good time” to make these kinds of changes and denied the changes were “purely a political thing.”
“The good thing about doing it after the election is you get 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” that Trump would be good for the US tech industry and that he “wants America to win” and could support US tech firms on issues like fines massive from Europeans. Union.
Changes to content moderation aren’t the only major policy changes Meta has announced in recent weeks. The company has also decided to bring back many of its DEI programs. Although Zuckerberg did not explicitly comment on the decision to scale back his DEI strategy, he told Rogan that he was done with the “culturally neutered” elements of corporate America.
Meta has donated $1 million to the upcoming inauguration, along with other big tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Uber.
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About Will McCurdy
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