White House officials applied increasing pressure to Facebook to remove posts that allegedly contained content discouraging people from receiving COVID-19 vaccines, according to documents made public on July 27.

“We are re facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content,” a Facebook employee told CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in April 2021 in one of the messages.

The employee noted that the company shared a list of the highest-performing posts related to vaccines for the week of April 5, 2021.

“While authoritative information dominated the list, the White House was concerned that the #3 post was a vaccine discouraging humorous meme, and they called on us to delete the meme,” the worker wrote.

The meme in question featured an actor pointing to a television, with language superimposed over the image stating, “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear … ‘did you or a loved one take the covid vaccine? You may be entitled…’”

Andy Slavitt, at the time a White House health official, was “outraged” that Facebook did not remove the post, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president of global affairs, recounted in a later email.

Mr. Clegg said he told Mr. Slavitt that removing the content would “represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US,” but Mr. Slavitt said that the post “was directly comparing Covid vaccines to asbestos poisoning in a way which demonstrably inhibits confidence in Covid vaccines amongst those the Biden administration is trying to reach,” according to the missive.

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