According to reports, the White House has YouTube and Facebook on its list of social media platforms responsible for an increasing spread of misinformation concerning COVID vaccinations.
President Joe Biden recently called Facebook and other social media companies killers for failing to stop the spread of vaccination misinformation.
“When it comes to what is going on in their platforms, Facebook and YouTube… are the judge, juror, and executioner,” an administration official said, illustrating their approach to COVID misinformation.
The requests to Facebook and YouTube came after the White House asked Facebook, Twitter, and Google in February to seek for their assistance in combating COVID misinformation and preventing it from going viral, according to another senior administration official at the time.
Since March 2020, YouTube has removed almost 900,000 videos containing COVID-19 falsehoods and canceled the YouTube channels of those listed in the CCDH investigation, according to spokeswoman Elena Hernandez. She explained that the company’s policies are determined by the video’s content rather than the speaker.
According to Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister, the facebook has removed over 18 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation since the outbreak began, and its own data shows that vaccination hesitancy has decreased by 50% in the United States since January, and vaccine uptake is strong.
The general concern of the Biden administration is that the platforms are “either lying to us and hiding the ball, or they’re not taking it seriously and there isn’t a comprehensive study of what’s going on in their platforms,” according to the official.
The fight against vaccine misinformation became a primary focus for the Biden administration due to the risk posed by the Delta strain, vaccination rates have dropped significantly.
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