Facebook rebuts White House criticism of vaccine misinformation, denounces finger pointing

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After being criticized by President Joe Biden and US Surgeon General, both of whom said last week that social media disinformation is killing Americans, Facebook Inc. had a blunt response this weekend: don’t blame us not.

At a time when COVID-19 cases are on the rise in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of US social media companies, Guy Rosen, Facebooks FB, -0.96% vice president of integrity, wrote in a blog post on Saturday. He said the data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the United States have been or wish to be vaccinated. President Bidens’ goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.

Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy last Thursday called misinformation about vaccines on social media a serious threat to public health.

Simply put, health misinformation has cost us our lives, Murthy said.

On the same day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki specifically targeted Facebook, telling reporters it needed to act faster to remove the abusive posts. Biden went further on Friday, categorically claiming that Facebook and other social media companies were killing people.

In Saturday’s blog post, Facebooks Rosen strongly refuted these claims, claiming that Facebook had in fact helped reduce the vaccine hesitancy rate in the United States by 50%, encouraged vaccinations among users, and removed more of 18 million misinformation about vaccines, and he berated the Biden administration for stopping finger-pointing.

While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a holistic societal approach to end this pandemic. And the facts, not the allegations, should help inform that effort, Rosen said. The point is that the acceptance of vaccines among Facebook users in the United States has increased.

The heated public discussion came amid frustration from the White House following month-long unproductive talks about curbing vaccine misinformation with Facebook, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The Biden administration has reportedly decided that public pressure on Facebook could be more effective.

The White House did not comment publicly on Facebook’s response on Sunday, but Murthy, appearing on CNN, has stuck to his post. I’ve been very consistent in what I’ve said to tech companies, he told CNN on the State of the Union. When we see steps that are good, we need to recognize them. But what I also told them, in public and in private, is that it is not enough. That we still see a proliferation of disinformation online. And we know that health misinformation harms people’s health. It costs them their lives.

In that same interview, Murthy said he was concerned about the sharp increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, and noted that almost all coronavirus deaths in the United States are now among the unvaccinated. To date, about 49% of Americans have been fully immunized, while 90 million eligible people in the United States have not.

Facebook shares fell nearly 3% last week, but are up 25% year-to-date and 41% in the past 12 months.

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