US President, Joe Biden has asserted that social media misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccinations is ‘killing people’ while calling on Facebook to ‘clean up its act’.
Speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday as he left for a weekend at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Biden said; ‘They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people’.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that the White House is turning up the pressure on social media companies to weed out what officials say is widely spread misinformation on coronavirus vaccinations.
According to US health officials, a current spike in Covid-19 deaths and illnesses around the country is almost exclusively hitting people who remain unvaccinated.
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‘There is a clear message that is coming through: this is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,‘ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky told reporters.
Many of those refusing vaccinations, despite the ease of availability throughout the United States, have said they do not trust the shots.
Skepticism is being fueled both by false posts spread by anti-vaccine activists online and by Republican politicians claiming the vaccinations are part of attempts at government control.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Facebook and others are not doing enough to push back.
‘Everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,’ she said.
Psaki said the White House was taking a more active approach in calling out what it sees as misinformation but insisted that Facebook in particular should react more quickly in taking down problematic posts.
The turning up of the volume against fake news immediately drew accusations from right-wing media that Biden was installing a “Big Brother” type surveillance over citizens’ opinions.
Facebook, which has contracted an army of independent outside fact-checkers, including from AFP, to try and clean up its content, pushed back at the White House claims.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
