by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Meta Platforms (which owns Facebook and Instagram) has publicly criticized the US Biden administration for demanding that Facebook restrict content deemed misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Axios reports. Indeed, Meta announced on January 7 that it will cease working with third-party fact-checking organizations.
During a recent interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Zuckerberg said the Biden administration and other politicians had condemned his company for “killing people” by allowing vaccine-skeptical content to be circulated on his platforms, Axios reports.
Describing the censorship of content deemed misinformation as “something out of 1984,” Zuckerberg said White House officials would “call up our team and like scream at them and curse, and it’s like… these documents are, it’s all kind of out there…[The situation] basically got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to, we’re not going to take down things that are true.’ That’s ridiculous.”
Zuckerberg went on to say he had come to believe that social media giants should not be in charge in determining “what is true in the world,” Axios reports. “If it’s OK to say on the floor of Congress, you should probably be able to debate it on social media,” Zuckerberg said.
To this end, Zuckerberg has now dismantled a fact-checking program that had been installed on Facebook on the grounds it was deemed biased. “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,” he said.
Zuckerberg also announced recently that Meta would be scrapping all DEI programs as well. Both this and the end of fact-checking on Facebook have been met with the public approval of US President Donald Trump, whom Zuckerberg visited at Mar a Lago shortly after the election in November.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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