Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg slammed the Biden Administration for censorship, took shots at one of his biggest tech rivals and said he’s “optimistic” about President-elect Donald Trump during a wide-ranging interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan.

Wearing a brown T-shirt and gold-chain, the suddenly conservative-sounding tech tycoon spent the first hour of the nearly three-hour sit-down discussing the strong-arm tactics Team Biden used to silence those who cast doubt on the COVID vaccine – a topic dear to Rogan’s heart.

Mark Zuckerberg unloaded on President Joe Biden and his administration during a surprise appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast that was published Friday.

Zuckerberg attacked the White House over the way senior officials pressured Meta to moderate content on its social media networks, part of a scathing interview just 10 days before Biden is set to leave office.

Mark Zuckerberg spent this week reshaping Meta to be more MAGA-friendly, and capped it off Friday by calling for the "repopulation" of the "cultural elite class" on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Why it matters: Over the last few days, Meta has dropped internal DEI guidelines and opened the floodgates for hate speech, racism, and conspiracy theories, but Zuckerberg's comments on Rogan tie him explicitly to right-wing talking points.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was a critical part of the COVID-19 pandemic response. However, on May 7 2024, the European Commission announced the vaccine is no longer authorised for use.

This EU announcement was preceded by an application from AstraZeneca on March 27 2024 to withdraw the EU marketing authorisation. This development has been covered in various media outlets as primarily related to the known “adverse events”, namely a very small risk of blood clots. However, other factors are far more likely to be driving this decision.

LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) - The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.

The Geneva-based U.N. health agency released a technical document on the topic on Thursday. It said it was the first step towards working out how to better prevent this kind of transmission, both for existing diseases like measles and for future pandemic threats.

During his hour-long conversation with Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, HBO host Bill Maher hit the liberal media for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 risks.

Spotify has determined that its newly published platform rules, which it says have been internally in place “for years,” do not prohibit numerous dangerous and unfounded claims spread on The Joe Rogan Experience. Spotify publicly disclosed these rules on January 30 following widespread backlash at the platform for profiting off of Joe Rogan’s misinformation about the pandemic.

As Marissa Zendejas waited to get her first COVID-19 vaccination shot at the headquarters of the California Farmworker Foundation, the 27-year-old rattled off the tall tales she had heard from people she knows and the internet about why she shouldn't.

"Like, your life span gets short if you're vaccinated," Zendejas said. "You only have this amount of time of life left. Or you'll get sterilized and won't have kids no more."

She laughed sheepishly and shook her head. "There are a lot of things circulating, and people get scared."

Since vaccines were first authorized for use nearly a year ago, swarms of anti-vaxxers have pushed a variety of unfounded claims suggesting the vaccine is unsafe and urging people not to receive one.

Even with 58.5% percent of Americans fully vaccinated and mandatory vaccines for federal employees and contractors set to go into effect, anti-vaccine misinformation is still commonplace.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, during a media blitz on Thursday, said that the new Biden administration rule that requires private employees to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or get tested for COVID-19 on a regular basis is not a mandate.

“This isn’t a mandate—this is a vaccine or testing,” Walsh, a former mayor of Boston, said during an appearance on MSNBC.