Facebook slams Joe Biden after he claimed they were ‘killing people’ with COVID-19 misinformation

1.9k

View
comments

Facebook has defended itself against U.S. President Joe Biden’s assertion that the social media platform is ‘killing people’ by allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to proliferate.

‘The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19,’ Facebook claimed in a lengthy corporate blog post by Guy Rosen, a company vice president. 

‘President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.’ 

‘At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies. While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic. And facts — not allegations — should help inform that effort. 

‘The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased. These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days,’ Facebook wrote in a defensive posting. 

Still, a source from the Biden administration said Saturday that Biden publicly lambasted the platform after the White House has been asking for ‘months’ for help fighting what it called disinformation, according to Fox News. 

Despite its puffed-up statements, Facebook hasn’t done enough to stamp out untruths, the administration official said, according to Fox. 

‘They’ve been withholding information on what the rules are, what they have put in place to prevent dangerous misinformation from spreading [and] how they measure whether it’s working,’ the officials said.

The disagreement has bubbled over after the Indian Delta variant has ripped across the world – and now is showing up in U.S. data, as cases rise in many places, even as polls show, many of the unvaccinated believe the negative information that’s circulating about the shots – information the White House says is false.

‘For people in the US on Facebook, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50%; and they are becoming more accepting of vaccines every day.

‘Since January, vaccine acceptance on the part of Facebook users in the US has increased by 10-15 percentage points (70% → 80-85%) and racial and ethnic disparities in acceptance have shrunk considerably.

‘Increased vaccine acceptance has been seen on and off Facebook, with many leaders throughout the US working to make that happen,’ the posting continued. ‘We employed similar tactics in the UK and Canada, which have similar rates of Facebook usage to the US, and those countries have achieved more than 70% vaccination of eligible populations. This all suggests there’s more than Facebook to the outcome in the US. 

‘Since the beginning of the pandemic we have removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation,’ Facebook explained.

‘We have also labeled and reduced the visibility of more than 167 million pieces of COVID-19 content debunked by our network of fact-checking partners so fewer people see it and — when they do — they have the full context.’ 

Tension between the social media platform at the Administration had been brewing.

On Friday, a Facebook official said similar to NBC: ‘In private exchanges the Surgeon General [Vivek Murthy] has praised our work, including our efforts to inform people about COVID-19… The White House is looking for scapegoats for missing their vaccine goals.’

The Biden Administration hoped to have 70 percent of American adults partially vaccinated against COVID by Independence Day – a goal they missed by three percent. 

The Commander-in-Chief has voiced his frustration about vaccine misinformation proliferating on social media, saying it is stopping millions of Americans from getting the jab. 

Earlier this week, the White House confirmed it had stepped up COVID-19 misinformation tracking as it tried to tackle slowing rates of vaccination. 

Press Secretary Jen Psaki explicitly singled out Facebook saying that influential anti-vaxxers ‘remain active’ on the site ‘despite some even being banned on other platforms’.

‘You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation,’ she stated on Thursday. 

The following day, President Biden was asked if he had a message for Facebook, to which he responded: ‘They’re killing people. I mean it really. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.’

But Facebook is not letting Biden control the narrative, pushing back in a series of statements shared with NBC. 

‘We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,’ a spokesperson declared. 

‘The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.’

A Facebook official then added the scathing claim that Biden was simply looking for scapegoats to explain why he failed to meet his goal to have 70 percent of the country vaccinated.  

The war of words marks a new development in the relationship between Facebook and the Biden Administration. 

The social media company was last year accused of siding with Biden in the run-up to the presidential election after it ‘reduced the distribution’ of a damning New York Post article about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. 

The bombshell story featured emails uncovered on Hunter’s laptop which pertained to his dealings with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. The New York Post accused Facebook of censoring the article, but the social media giant claimed it may have been dubiously sourced and needed further fact-checking before it could be widely shared. 

For conservatives, the action amplified their belief that Facebook and other Big Tech companies had a strong liberal bias. 

But, some liberals have conversely accused Facebook of failing to adequately fact-check conservatives and of allowing Russian disinformation to circulate unabated on the platform. 

Back in 2019, Facebook CEO dined with Mark Zuckerberg, however the relationship between the pair subsequently soured. 

Trump was been suspended from Facebook following the January 6 riots, and his ban still remains in effect.   

Earlier this week, Jen Psaki said Facebook should currently be doing more to combat misinformation about the vaccine.  

A surge in cases, caused by the Indian ‘Delta’ strain of COVID-19, are concentrated among people who have not been vaccinated, triggering a fresh push to ensure that accurate information is available.

‘Our point is that there is information that is leading to people not taking the vaccine and people are dying as a result. We have a responsibility as a public health matter to raise that issue,’ said Psaki on Thursday.  

It followed the announcement a day earlier that the Biden administration had been flagging problematic posts – a move some said was a violation of both privacy and freedom of speech rights. 

‘We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team — given as [Surgeon General Vivek] Murthy conveyed this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic,’ Psaki said on Thursday.

The admission triggered Republican condemnation.  

Sen. Josh Hawley accused the White House of imposing a COVID speech code. 

‘I think it’s really scary to have the federal government of the United States, the White House, compiling lists of people, organizations, whatever, and then going to a private company that, by the way, is a monopoly, Facebook, and saying, ‘You need to censor. You need to do something about this.” he told Fox News. 

Journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote a long Twitter thread condemning the practice. 

‘If you don’t find it deeply disturbing that the White House is ‘flagging’ internet content that they deem ‘problematic’ to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally [sic] an authoritarian.’

Dan Gainor, of Media Research Center, also ripped into Psaki and the White House by tweeting ‘being anti-vaccine is part of free speech. @PressSec is against freedom.’

John Cooper tweeted an emoji of two red light sirens and said, ‘Jen Psaki says the Biden administration is actively flagging what they deem ‘disinformation’ about the pandemic to Facebook for censoring. What could go wrong??’

Many people have pointed out that the Wuhan lab leak was once considered a laughable, looney conspiracy theory until the last couple months when more evidence came to light that supported this COVID-19 origin theory.

However Psaki has insisted that the Administration is not forcing Facebook to take any posts down.  

‘We don’t take anything down,’ she said. ‘We don’t block anything.

‘Facebook, and any private sector company, makes decisions about what information should be on their platform.’ 

‘Obviously there are steps they have taken. They’re a private sector company,’ she said.

‘There are additional steps they can take. It’s clear that there are more that can be taken.’

 However, Psaki’s pointed comments about the social media giant gave the American public insight into reported tensions between Facebook and the White House.

A source familiar with the conversations between the Biden administration and Facebook representatives told CNN that White House officials believe Facebook isn’t ‘taking this very seriously, or they are hiding something.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Politico reported that Biden-allied groups – including the Democratic National Committee – planned to fact-check more aggressively.

Part of the plan is working with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines sent in text messages or social media messages.

‘When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country’s public health and will not shy away from calling that out,’ White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Politico. 

The impact of unvaccinated populations were spelled during the White House COVID-19 briefing on Friday, which revealed the surge in cases.

‘We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination rates because unvaccinated people are at risk,’ said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who called it a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated.’

The result, she added, was likely to be deaths that could have been prevented. 

‘The good news is that if you are fully vaccinated, you are protected against COVID hospitalization and death and are even protected against the known variants, including the Delta variant circulating in this country,’ she said. 

‘If you are not vaccinated, you remain at risk.’