Facebook and YouTube are to blame for anti-vax propaganda

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Social media platforms had given assurances of a crackdown on vaccine misinformation, but false content continues to circulate.

The administration of US President Joe Biden wants social media platforms to do more to tackle false claims about Covid-19 vaccines. (PA)

YouTube and Facebook are on the list of social media platforms that the White House believes are responsible for an alarming spread of misinformation about COVID vaccines and are not doing enough to stop it, Reuters reported citing sources within the ‘administration.

The criticism comes just a week after President Joe Biden called Facebook and other social media companies “killers” for failing to slow the spread of vaccine misinformation. He has since softened his tone.

A senior administration official said one of the key issues was “inconsistent enforcement”.

YouTube and Facebook decide what is considered disinformation on their platforms. But the results left the White House unhappy.

“Facebook and YouTube (…) are the judge, the jury and the executioner when it comes to what’s going on on their platforms,” ​​said an administration official, describing their approach to Covid disinformation .

“They can mark their own homework.”

Some of the main pieces of misinformation about the vaccines that the Biden administration is battling include that the Covid-19 vaccines are ineffective, false claims that they carry microchips and that they harm women’s fertility, the said. responsible.

Social media companies have recently come under fire from Biden, his press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, all of whom said the spread of vaccine lies made it harder to fight the pandemic and the rescue of lives.

A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which was also highlighted by the White House, showed that 12 anti-vaccine accounts disseminate nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine misinformation online. Six of those accounts are still posted on YouTube.

READ MORE: Russia denigrates Western vaccines with misinformation

“We would like everyone to do more” to limit the dissemination of inaccurate information from these accounts, the official said.

Tackling vaccine misinformation has become a top priority for the Biden administration at a time when the pace of vaccinations has slowed dramatically despite the risk posed by the Delta variant, with people in many parts of the country hostile to the disease. vaccination.

The requests to Facebook and YouTube come after the White House contacted Facebook, Twitter and Google in February to crack down on Covid disinformation, asking for their help in preventing it from going viral.

READ MORE: Study finds vaccine reluctance linked to belief in viral hoaxes

“Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to vaccine misinformation… but Google has a lot to answer for and always manages to get away with it because people forget they own YouTube,” Imran said. Ahmed, CCDH founder and managing director.

YouTube spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said that since March 2020, the company has removed more than 900,000 videos containing disinformation about Covid-19 and terminated the YouTube channels of people identified in the CCDH report.

Source: Reuters

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