Thread by @EndTribalism

Zuckerberg revealed on Joe Rogan that the Biden administration pressured social media to block true vaccine side effect information.

For years, many of us have raised concerns about this.

A short 🧵 with everything you need to know from the episode!

Zuck opened the conversation discussing the overall mission of social media.

“The whole point of social media is giving people the ability to share what they want.”

“It goes back to our original mission which is just give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Zuck then explains when he believes internet censorship started to occur more often.

“I think it was 2 main events that really triggered this.

In 2016, there was the election of president Trump, also coincided with Brexit in the EU and and sort of the fragmentation of the EU.

Then in 2020, there was COVID.”

“I think that those were basically these two events where for the first time we just faced this massive institutional pressure to basically start censoring content on ideological grounds.”

Then Zuckerberg dropped the story you have probably seen blowing up on X.

The Biden administration during the pandemic was trying to force social media companies to block any posts about vaccine side effects, even ones they knew were true.

“They basically pushed us and said anything that says vaccines might have side effects you basically need to take down.”

Zuckerberg even exposes that the Biden administration was very threatening in these phone calls.

“These people from the Biden administration would call up our team and scream at them and curse at them.”

Rogan also shared his thoughts saying how important it is that people can share their thoughts during things like the Covid pandemic.

“If there's something like Covid mandates or some things that you're dealing with and you don't wanna get fired because of it, you should be able to talk about it.”

“You should be able to post facts and information and what you've learned and anecdotal experiences of people in your family that had vaccine side effects and not worry about losing your job.”

Zuckerberg ended the interview defending the Biden administration and how they handled Covid.

“If you go back to the Covid example, I think in that case, their goal of trying to get everyone to get vaccinated was actually I think a good goal.”

“I still think it's good for more people to get the vaccine, but the government needs to play by the rules in terms of you can't just suppress true things in order to make your case.”