Meta’s Zuckerberg Acknowledges Censoring Information About COVID Shots
- by Natasha Hobley
- Published
- Cultural Values
A recent press video announcement and press release issued on Jan. 7, 2025 by Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and its parent company, Meta Platforms, said that Meta will end its fact-checking program and “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship.” In addition, the company will go back to its previous format of allowing more political content to be visible on its platforms.1 Zuckerberg recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and admitted the company had gone too far in complying with requests from the Biden administration to censor information related to the COVID-19 shots.2
During the three-hour interview with Rogan, Zuckerberg said that his own company’s fact-checking process was “something out of 1984,” referencing the George Orwell novel 1984 depicting a totalitarian government that uses censorship to control its citizens. “It really is a slippery slope, and it just got to a point where it’s just, OK, this is destroying so much trust, especially in the United States to have this program,” Zuckerberg stated.2
During the Meta video announcement about changes in free speech policies, Zuckerberg said that factcheckers had been too politically biased and destroyed more trust than they created. He vowed to prioritize free speech and announced that factcheckers would be replaced with a community notes program, similar to the social media platform X, which relies on other users to add context and caveats to controversial posts.1
“In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across out platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far,” Zuckerberg admitted in his Meta announcement. He went onto state that he wanted to return to the fundamental commitment to free expression that he spoke about in a Georgetown University speech in 2019. The content of that speech stood in sharp contrast to the censorship of speech approach that was taken on Facebook and Instagram beginning in 2020 after the government declared a coronavirus pandemic and put pressure on social media platforms to block public conversations about vaccination and health, including COVID shot risks and failures and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Doctors, Vaccine Information Censored on Social Media Platforms
In his speech at Georgetown, Zuckerberg argued that free expression had been the driving force behind progress in American society and that inhibiting speech often reinforces existing institutions and power structures instead of empowering people. “More people across the spectrum believe that achieving the political outcomes they think matter is more important than every person having a voice. I think that’s dangerous,” he stated at Georgetown in October 2019.1
But a few short months later, as the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus began appearing in the news and on social media, social media censorship was set in motion. The wide introduction of the term “misinformation” was used as justification to remove posts or people from platforms entirely. Doctors, researchers, politicians, vaccine safety and informed consent advocates and others who spoke out about the disease and asked questions about or publicly discussed reactions to the COVID shots, were censored, shadow banned or removed entirely from social media platforms. Videos posted on YouTube or Facebook were removed from platforms simply for stating alternative views or voicing concerns.3 4
The Biden administration went as far as to temporarily form a Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) as an advisory board to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The aim of the board was to protect national security by “combating misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation that threatens the security of the homeland.” The board was in operation for a few short months before it was paused, and later terminated, after public backlash and the raising of constitutional issues.5
Biden Administration Coerced Meta to Censor More Aggressively
During the Rogan interview, Zuckerberg said that, with regard to information about COVID-19 and the COVID shots, the Biden administration would “call up the guys on our team and yell at them and cursing and threatening repercussions if we don’t take down things that are true.” Zuckerberg claimed that even satirical memes making jokes about the vaccine were requested to be removed. He admitted that his company had gone too far in complying with the administration’s requests and that he had been worried from the beginning about “becoming this sort of decided of what is true in the world.”2
Despite Zuckerberg’s aim to get back to free speech, some disagree with the policy change. The Real Facebook Oversight Board—an outside accountability organization comprised of academics, lawyers, and civil rights advocates called the changes “political pandering.”
“Meta’s announcement today is a retreat from any sane and safe approach to content moderation,” the group said in a statement.6
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