The President of the United States, Joe Biden , has criticized platforms such as Facebook or Twitter this Friday for allowing false information about Covid-19 to be disseminated there, resulting in part of the population being reluctant to be vaccinated, and therefore, ” they are killing people . “
The president has accused these platforms of slowing down the vaccination process, which finally did not reach 70% on July 4 , as Biden himself had promised. “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,” the president told the media, reports NBC News .
For its part, Facebook has defended itself against these accusations stating that “they are not supported by facts” and have claimed that more than 2 billion people have seen “reliable information” through its portal.
Additionally, another 3.3 million Americans have used the web to find out where and when to get vaccinated. “The facts show that Facebook is helping to save lives. Period,” a company spokesman replied.
On the other hand, the surgeon general of the United States, Vivek Murthy, already pointed out this Thursday that disinformation in health matters, and specifically about Covid-19, is “a serious threat to public health ” and pointed directly to Facebook for not respond more sharply to the spread of false information, reports CNN .
Fight misinformation
President Biden and senior Facebook officials have met over the last few weeks, meetings that have been “tense” and in which these cases of disinformation have been dealt with.
The US Administration accused the company of “not taking the case very seriously” or of “hiding something”, for which they consider that Facebook shows a lack of will to solve the case, according to CNN sources .
Along these lines, this Friday, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki criticized social media platforms for not taking sufficient measures to address disinformation.
“Why don’t we all participate in a process that will help provide accurate information ?” Proposed Psaki, who highlighted Facebook’s lack of response to the situation.
Over the last few weeks, the White House has even recommended the elimination of twelve specific social media profiles that are linked to the creation and dissemination of almost 65% of false information against the Covid vaccine. -19, pick up NBC .
To which a Facebook spokesperson has responded that the company created by Mark Zuckerberg has already eliminated “more than 18 million pieces of misinformation”, as well as accounts that were “repeatedly breaking the rules.”
