Mark Zuckerberg says the the Biden administration forced Meta to censor a Covid meme - and said the president's staff would scream and swear at his workers to remove content they didn't like.  

The Meta chief, 40, told Joe Rogan he was stunned when the White House got in touch to demand a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV in his movie Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was taken down.

They were irritated by the caption added to it, which read: '10 years from now you're going to see an ad that says if you took a Covid vaccine you'd be eligible for a payment.'

Zuckerberg's appearance on the podcast comes moves to make inroads with the incoming Trump administration, including dramatically axing Meta's team of fact-checkers this week. 

And on the  same day the Rogan episode dropped, Meta revealed they had terminated all DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs effective immediately. 

Axios first reported an internal memo explained to staff the decision was made because of a changing 'legal and policy landscape' about DEI in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted.

Zuckerberg said the meme was 'sort of like a class action lawsuit type meme' and personally deemed it little more than a harmless political joke. 

After being told to take down the meme, Zuckerberg claimed he and his team responded: 'No we're not we're not going to take down humor.' 

 Shockingly, Zuckerberg also told of how Biden's staff would demand the platform censor information that was accurate, including that Covid vaccines can cause side effects. 

Zuckerberg said the White House 'pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true', and 'said anything that says vaccines have side effects, you need to take down.' 

'Basically, it just got to this point where we were like no, we're not going to take down things that are true,' Zuckerberg said. 'That's ridiculous.' 

The Biden administration spent much of the Covid crisis trying to downplay a rare but serious heart condition called myocarditis that was linked to vaccines developed to tackle the virus.