Biden’s attack on Facebook follows months of frustration inside the White House البيت

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President Biden’s attack on Facebook on Friday followed months of growing frustration within his administration over the social media giant’s handling of vaccine misinformation, according to US officials, leading to public tensions that could complicate efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Harsh words escalated between the White House and Silicon Valley over the weekend, with Facebook issuing a blunt statement accusing the Biden administration of distorting the facts. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who made the rounds on Sunday talk shows in Washington, responded that social media companies haven’t done enough to crack down on false statements about Covid-19 vaccines.

“The reality is that disinformation continues to spread like wildfire in our country, aided and abetted by technology platforms,” Dr. Murthy said on Fox News Sunday. He agreed that companies like Facebook had taken steps to tackle false vaccine information, but added: “That’s not enough.”

Facebook rejected criticism of the Biden administration. On Saturday, the company posted an item on its blog saying it was not responsible for Mr Biden’s failure to meet his publicly stated goal that 70% of American adults had received at least one dose of the vaccine by July 4 and that 85% of its US users had been vaccinated against Covid. -19 or wish to. Facebook also said it’s doing its part to help vaccinate more Americans, such as running pop-up vaccine clinics in low-income and disadvantaged communities in California and other states.

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Despite the heated rhetoric, administration officials have indicated they have few concrete policy options to suppress disinformation — aside from public pressure on social media companies.

However, the struggle has further complicated Facebook’s profile in Washington – with both left and right – over everything from disinformation to its economic and political influence. And while the company is under fire from the White House for failing to do more to censor the posts, some Republicans have accused it of cracking down on free speech. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said on Fox News Sunday that the Biden administration “will go to the monopolists and say, ‘You are our tool to censor the opinions we disagree with.'”

The weekend exchanges came after a week in which top Biden administration officials unleashed Facebook and other social media companies.

The Surgeon General issued an advisory warning Thursday against health misinformation, claiming that social media companies “have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment, with little accountability to their users.” On Friday, Mr. Biden accused social media companies like Facebook of killing people by not doing more to remove false statements about a vaccine.

Indoor dining, exercise classes, and concerts. These previously common occurrences are traced back to everyday life. But due to Covid-19, everyone is now enjoying a different level of comfort. What happens in the brain when we decide what is dangerous or not? Image caption: Laura Kamerman

Facts show that Facebook helps save lives. “Period,” Facebook spokesperson Kevin McAllister said in response to Biden’s comments.

According to Zignal Labs Inc. , the false narratives that Covid-19 vaccines lead to widespread deaths and that the US government mandates vaccines has more than doubled across major social media platforms in the past three months. The media analytics firm said microchips and vaccines alter people’s DNA.

Relations between Biden and Facebook have always been frosty, although the current situation appears to have heightened tensions as the president looks to control the spread of the coronavirus. Facebook swiftly rebutted its suggestion that management was “pointing the finger” showing the company’s plans to defend itself publicly.

“Facebook’s immediate defense about health misinformation shows that they feel an internal pressure to make their position clear,” said Joan Donovan, director of research at Harvard’s Shornstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy.

US officials said the administration’s confrontational approach represented a shift for Biden and his team, who began meeting with social media companies during the presidential transition in an effort to strengthen protections against disinformation. They met executives including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

But in recent months, behind-the-scenes discussions with Facebook have become increasingly unfruitful, according to officials, who said they were unhappy with the company’s responses to their requests for more information about how it responded to the stream of disinformation.

Convinced that private negotiations have little hope of success, top Biden administration officials decided to increase public pressure on Facebook this week amid growing concern in the White House as the pace of vaccines slows and the highly transmissible variable delta spreads.

Administration officials called on social media companies to provide researchers with more data about the type and extent of misinformation on their platforms and to make changes to their algorithms to limit the spread of false claims. They have also pressured companies to apply their rules evenly across multiple platforms.

Officials initially had high hopes in conversations with social media companies over recent months, believing that the Biden and Facebook team could put their differences aside to help tackle the pandemic.

A senior administration official said that during meetings with Facebook, Biden administration officials pressed the company to explain how it measures success in responding to disinformation, where the misinformation comes from and the impact of misinformation on users. The answers given in the reply were unsatisfactory from the point of view of the senior officials. The official said some in management came to believe the company’s approach had fundamental flaws and that its standards were not strict enough.

The official said the administration is less concerned about individual posts that are false or misleading than it is about inflating and diverting users to those posts.

Although management does not regularly flag certain content to Facebook, according to two aides, officials have occasionally raised examples they said violated the spirit of the company’s efforts to combat misinformation. One example cited by an administration official: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who questioned the efficacy and safety of vaccines, was banned from Instagram, but not Facebook. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion.

Kennedy said Sunday that any conversation between the administration and Facebook about his social media posts would amount to unconstitutional government censorship.

“misinformation. The term has nothing to do with falsehood. It’s just any statement that deviates from official statements and announcements, he said, adding: “There is no epidemiological exception to the Bill of Rights.”

Facebook said it does not automatically disable accounts across its apps for repeatedly violating its Community Standards, because accounts may post about various things on its services. But in May 2019, the company banned several figures whose views were deemed too provocative to share on all of its services, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, far-right talk show host Alex Jones and conservative Jewish activist Laura Lomer. Facebook said it only permanently bans repeat offenders across its platforms.

Facebook said it has already taken action on all eight of the surgeon general’s recommendations on what tech companies can do to help.

Chad Day contributed to this article.

Write to Andrew Restuccia at [email protected] and Sarah E. Needleman at [email protected]

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