President Joe Biden slammed social media platforms over not doing enough to curb the spread of misinformation relating to the coronavirus and vaccines.
“They’re killing people. I mean they’re really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,” Biden told NBC News White House Correspondent Peter Alexander on Friday. “And they’re killing people.”
Facebook responded to the president’s claim, saying they “will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts.”
“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,” a spokesperson for the social media giant said, according to NBC News. 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.”
The White House has become increasingly outspoken in recent weeks about social media platforms not going far enough to combat misinformation. US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called COVID-19 misinformation “a serious threat to public health,” and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts” in relation to COVID-19 misinformation.
These new statements come as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky cautions of spiking coronavirus cases across the country.
“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Walensky said Friday during a press briefing. “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk.”
