Guests who appear on The Joe Rogan Experience have been known to stir up controversy and make headlines in the past, but for his episode, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually earned an official statement from the FBI regarding some of the contents of his interview.
If you tuned into Rogan’s chat with the tech head, you would have heard the father of two discussing Facebook’s censorship of a New York Post article ahead of the 2020 presidential election. As Complex notes, the story in question was about the alleged contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop – which reportedly included details about Joe Biden being introduced to a Ukrainian energy tycoon by his son, among other corrupt business dealings.
The laptop’s hard drive was allegedly given to the news outlet by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the article produced as a result was also censored on Twitter.
“The background here is that the FBI came to us – some folks on our team – and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that,'” Zuckerberg told Rogan.
In the years since, The Washington Post and The New York Times have worked to verify that at least some of the censored story’s contents were true, although it’s been noted that not all the details could be confirmed.
The Meta co-founder admitted that it “sucks” when things that are censored turn out to be true, but to this day, the article remains a “hyper-political issue.” He explained, “Depending on what side of the political spectrum [you’re on], you either think we didn’t censor it enough or we censored it way too much.”
In their response to Zuckerberg’s comments on The Joe Rogan Experience, the FBI wrote, “The FBI routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats.”
They added that they often provide “foreign threat indicators” to private companies, although they “cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received.”
Meta also shared an official statement on social media, pointing out that the New York native’s story isn’t anything new – he previously addressed FBI warnings during a 2020 hearing.
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[Via]