Mark Zuckerberg (L); Joe Boden (R).
Credit: Reuters Photos
With just days remaining before Donald Trump's swearing in as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, Meta owner and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is grabbing the headlines for making conspicuous policy changes in his company that seem to align with the President-elect's line of thought.
Now, fuelling talks of his shift to a pro-Trump stance, Zuckerberg recently lashed out at outgoing US President Joe Biden and his administration and accused him of forcing censorship during the Covid-19 pandemic and pressurising Meta to refrain from promoting any posts or news that spoke about the ill-effects of the Covid vaccine.
Zuckerberg spoke about a number of topics in an extensive interview with popular US podcaster Joe Rogan. Sharing his opinion on what he indicated to be an authoritative approach adopted by the Biden administration to curb any viewpoints against the Covid vaccine, Zuckerberg said, "It was brutal.. The US government should be defending its companies, not be at the tip of the spear attacking its companies," during a recent appearance at the podcast called 'The Joe Rogan Experience'.
"Basically it just got to this point (where we told them), 'No, we’re not going to take down this thing that was true,'" Zuckerberg said. He further claimed that officials belonging to the Biden government used to call up Meta executives and "screamed" and "cursed" at them while being persistent on their demands of taking down any posts highlighting the negative aspects or side effects the coronavirus vaccine from Facebook.
"This really hit the most extreme during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine programme. I’m personally pro-vaccine as it has more positive than negative. But I think that while they were trying to push that programme, they were also trying to censor anyone who is basically arguing it," he added, reiterating his allegations of Biden administration's chokehold on freedom of speech.