Biden says social media misinformation is “killing people”
The Biden administration has lately several times put pressure on social media to act more strongly against misinformation about the pandemic and vaccination. At a meeting with reporters President Joe Biden accused social media on ”killing people” by allowing coronavirus misinformation to spread on their platforms.
At a meeting with reporter at the White House he was asked what message he would like to send to social media on misinformation and answered:
“They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,
The US surgeon general Vivek Murthy earlier in the week in an advisory said that health misinformation is an “urgent threat” adding that misinformation lead Americans to not getting vaccinated.
“Modern technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to their users. They have allowed people who intentionally spread misinformation — what we call ‘disinformation’ — to have extraordinary reach”, he said at a briefing in Washington.
Facebook issued a statement saying the company has removed more than 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation and removed accounts that repeatedly break the company’s rules about misinformation.
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