Facebook to Biden: don’t blame us for spreading anti-vaccine lies

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Facebook hit back on Saturday against President Joe Bidens’ unusually blunt claim that social media companies are killing people by allowing vaccine misinformation to spread across their platforms. In a blog post subtly titled Moving Past the Finger Pointing, Facebook executive Guy Rosen sought to tell a very different story than the one the administration has been promoting in recent days and suggested the White House use Facebook as a scapegoat. to explain its own pandemic shortcomings.

Facebook is not the reason [Bidens July 4 vaccination] target was missed, Rosen wrote, referring to the administration’s goal that 70% of adults in the United States get at least one shot by that date. At a time when COVID-19 cases are on the rise in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies.

Rosen has put together a bunch of bullets arguing that his company is not responsible for the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. He noted that we have done our part in other areas to promote the vaccine and claimed that acceptance of the vaccine among Facebook users in the United States has increased. The social media giant appeared to downplay the influence of anti-vaccination content and misinformation on its platform, as well as its broader role in the country’s public health battle. Rosen cited the higher vaccination figures in the UK and Canada, for example, to suggest that there is more to the bottom line than Facebook in the US and that facts and not claims should help shed light on this. effort.

Rosens’ post did not address the vaccine misinformation on Instagram, which Facebook also owns.

This back-and-forth comes as the White House, faced with declining nationwide vaccination rates and the spread of the Delta variant, steps up its fight against the right-wing disinformation campaign that is believed to be contributing to the disparity geographic vaccination rates. (U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently said disinformation is an urgent threat to public health.) Administration officials have started to take a harsher line against tech companies like Facebook and Republican officials seen as not doing enough to combat anti-vaccination content or, in the case of conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, actively contributing.

In recent months, Facebook has made changes to crack down on vaccine lies and limit content that actively discourages people from getting vaccinated, the New York Times noted. But inaccurate information about the vaccine on social media platforms like Facebook persisted. Biden administrations attempting to do something about it has been complicated by Facebook’s repeated refusal to provide even basic data on the amount of vaccine misinformation and whether the company’s efforts to stop its spread are working, according to the Times.

Facebook is right to note that there are several factors behind the spread of health misinformation. Reluctance to immunize can be a complex and personal problem. But actors who amplify unfounded fears about the vaccine compound the problem. That includes Fox News, whose anti-vaccine scare campaign ran across the network, but mostly on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the top-rated cable show in July. While Fox has attempted to lessen the blame by defending Tucker Carlson as a thought leader, the network has nonetheless allowed the show to be a hotbed of vaccine resistance. Carlsons’ playbook has for months been about amplifying conspiracy theories and the rare negative side effects, demonizing the Biden administration’s efforts to protect people due to government over-outreach, and dealing generally a serious public health problem such as cultural war fodder.

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