WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Joe Biden has brushed off his assessment that the social media giant is “killing people” by hosting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on its platforms, saying on Monday that he hopes That they wouldn’t take it “personally” and would instead do the job of saving lives.
While companies like Facebook defend their practices and say they are helping people around the world access verified information about shots, the White House says they haven’t done enough to stop misinformation. This has slowed the pace of new vaccinations in the US. a trick. It comes as the US sees a surge in virus cases and deaths among people who have not received a shot, in what officials call an emerging “unvaccinated epidemic”.
Speaking at the White House, Biden insisted he meant “exactly what I said” when he told the tech giant on Friday that “they are killing people.” But he said his rhetoric was aimed at creating pressure on companies to act.
“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying ‘Facebook is killing people,’ that they will do something about misinformation,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments come as the White House struggles to counter resistance to get a shot, especially among the younger and more Republican demographic. Fewer than 400,000 Americans are getting their first vaccine dose every day — down from a high of more than 2 million per day in April. More than 90 million eligible people have not received a single dose.
Administrations have increasingly caught on to false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines as a driver of that hesitation. It cited a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that studies extremism, that has been linked to A dozen accounts to spread the disinfection of most vaccines On Facebook.
In this October 25, 2019, photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York. (AP/Mark Lenihan)
“Facebook is not killing people. These 12 people are giving false information, anyone listening to it is getting hurt, it is killing people,” Biden apparently rebutted his comment, saying that He stood behind his earlier allegation against Facebook. “This is bad information.”
“I’m not trying to hold people accountable. I’m trying to get people to look at themselves, look in the mirror,” Biden said, “think of the misinformation that your son, your daughter, your going to a relative.
In the administration’s view, chasing social media companies — which have come under increasing scrutiny in Washington not only over misinformation, but also over antitrust and privacy practices — is itself a proxy for criticizing the promoters of disinformation. To avoid amplifying the lies, the White House has generally tried to avoid directly engaging with those spreading misinformation.
The White House says platforms are not transparent about vaccine misinformation promoted to users, and Facebook in particular has not employed all of its means to prevent the spread of false information because it isolates its user base. Tries to avoid bites and bites. Its benefit. Officials argued that the platform should prevent vaccine misinformation from appearing in users’ feeds as suggested or potentially relevant content.
According to one official, the Biden team has repeatedly clashed with social media companies over misinformation, and White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein raised the issue in conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Biden himself has not spoken to the executive since taking office.
Last week, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared misinformation about vaccines to be a fatal threat to public health.
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, July 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“Misinformation is an imminent and fatal threat to the health of our nation,” Murthy said during remarks Thursday at the White House. “We as a nation must combat misinformation. Life depends on it.”
Murthy said technology companies and social media platforms should make meaningful changes to their products and software to reduce the spread of false information by increasing access to authoritative, fact-based sources.
Too often, he said, platforms are built in a way that encourages the spread of misinformation.
“We are asking them to step up,” Murthy said. “We can’t wait any longer for them to take aggressive action.”
Facebook responded to Biden’s attack on Friday, with spokesman Kevin McAllister saying, “The facts show that Facebook is helping to save lives. Period.”
The company also released a blog post saying that its internal research showed it did not account for Biden’s missed vaccination target. “Data shows that 85 percent of Facebook users in the US have or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Biden aims to vaccinate 70% of Americans by July 4. There is no reason Facebook missed this goal.”
Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who focuses on politics and health care, said Facebook “must be held fully accountable for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread.”
“With that said, we must be careful about assuming that the spread of misinformation online is a cause for hesitation rather than a consequence,” he said.
Example: A teen receives the COVID-19 vaccine on April 19, 2021, in West New York, New Jersey. (AP/Seth Wenig)
“It is very difficult to directly show the connection between misinformation on social media and vaccine hesitation,” Nyahan said. “We don’t have a good measure of what people see on social media or the ability to link this to their vaccination behavior. And even if we see correlations in the data, it’s causation rather than causation.” Might be fake – people who are not going to be vaccinated are probably more likely to be exposed to negative and false information about the vaccine.”
That said, Nyhan said there is some evidence that exposure to misinformation may reduce a person’s intention to vaccinate immediately after seeing the misinformation.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki emphasized Monday. “We are not in a war or a fight against Facebook – we are in a battle with the virus.” But it pressured companies to share details of how many Americans are exposed to misinformation on their platforms and how their secret and powerful algorithms promote false content to users.
“Do you have access to information from these platforms about who is receiving the misinformation?” He asked. “I don’t think the information has been released. Do you know how the algorithm is working on any of these platforms? I don’t think the information has been released.”