US President Joe Biden has warned that the spread of Covid-19 misinformation on social media is “killing people”.
He was responding to an issue from a reporter about the alleged role of “platforms like Facebook” in spreading falsehoods about vaccines and therefore the pandemic.
The White House has been increasing pressure on social media companies to tackle disinformation.
Facebook says it’s taking “aggressive action” to guard public health.
“They’re killing people,” Mr Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday. “The only pandemic we’ve is among the unvaccinated.”
US health officials have warned that the country’s current spike in Covid-19 deaths and infections is exclusively hitting unvaccinated communities.
media captionBBC Reality Check debunks five false vaccine claims
Earlier on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Facebook and other platforms weren’t doing enough to combat misinformation about vaccines.
“Obviously, there are steps they need taken,” she said. “It’s clear that there are more which will be taken.”
A spokesman for Facebook, Kevin McAlister, said the corporate would “not be distracted by accusations which are not supported by the facts”.
“We’ve removed quite 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation [and] removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules,” the corporate said during a separate statement.
You get the sense Facebook is becoming increasingly uninterested in being criticised by US governments. Mr Trump and fellow Republicans believed Facebook was restricting free speech by cracking down on voter-fraud conspiracies.
Mr Biden and his team have a special criticism – that Facebook doesn’t do enough to require down conspiracies – like anti-vax content. Last week the president signed an executive order aimed toward trying to see the facility of companies like Facebook.
Facebook is by no means the sole company that has been accused of failing to act on conspiracies. YouTube, for instance , has been slammed for its moderation practices.
That Mr Biden picks out Facebook is indicative of a private grudge he has with the corporate . In January 2020 he told the ny Times: “I’ve never been an enormous Zuckerberg fan. i feel he’s a true problem.”
Concerningly for Facebook, Mr Biden is now the president, and his rhetoric is merely getting harsher.
Facebook has faced criticism for its moderation, and misleading content about the pandemic remains widely available on its platforms.
Earlier on Friday Rochelle Walensky, director of the US public health body Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told reporters: “There may be a clear message that’s coming through: this is often becoming an epidemic of the unvaccinated.”
About 67.9% folks adults have received one dose of the vaccine, while 59.2% of adults are fully vaccinated.
Many eligible people refusing vaccinations within the US have said they do not trust them.
In March, a report said anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter had reached “more than 59 million followers, making these most vital |the biggest”> the most important and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers”.
That same month, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey – the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter respectively – were questioned in Congress over disinformation.
Mr Dorsey told the senators that Twitter was committed to moderating posts. Mr Pichai said YouTube worked to get rid of misleading content, and highlighted its role in relaying vaccine information.
It comes after social media platforms admitted censoring revelations about politically embarrassing emails leaked from Mr Biden’s son’s laptop within the run-up to last November’s presidential election.
Twitter and Facebook blocked links to the ny Post reporting on Hunter Biden’s dealings after his father’s campaign team claimed without evidence that it had been “disinformation”.