Facebook hitting back at Biden for missed vaccination target
Facebook is hitting back at president Joe Biden who said that social media is ”killing people” by allowing misinformation about covid and vaccine on their platforms. “At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies”, Guy Rosen, VP at Facebook wrote in a blog post adding that “facts – not allegations” are needed.
“The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased. These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.”
He refers to Facebook’s collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and University of Maryland and a survey showing that “for people in the US on Facebook, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50%; and they are becoming more accepting of vaccines every day.”
“The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”
He argues that UK and Canada have similar rates of Facebook usage to the US and those countries have achieved more than 70% vaccination of eligible populations.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic we have removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation. We have also labelled and reduced the visibility of more than 167 million pieces of COVID-19 content debunked by our network of fact-checking partners so fewer people see it and — when they do — they have the full context. “
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