While media companies and journalisms will always thrive as long as there are newsworthy topics to cover.
In the modern days of digital technology, information spread the fastest when it uses the internet. And on the internet, the platforms that benefit the most from this fact, are social media networks.
Fortunately, social networks allow anyone anywhere to have free access to information, as soon as it happens. Unfortunately, information on social media networks can also include people's opinions, which can result to misinformation. And this can cloud people's judgement.
And in the era of 'COVID-19' coronavirus that still plague the world, misinformation about the disease and the vaccines spreading on social media networks is "killing people."
That according to U.S. President Joe Biden.
According to the White House, Facebook as the largest social network needs to clean up its act.
“They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people,” Biden told reporters at the White House.
Because thoughts and opinions can spread like wildfire on social media networks, affecting other people's thought about the vaccines, the White House is pressuring social media companies to weed out what officials say is widely-spread misinformation on COVID-19 vaccinations.
According to U.S. health officials, the more recent spike in COVID-19-related deaths and illness in the U.S. is almost exclusively affecting those people who are still unvaccinated.
“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.
President Joe Biden's criticism on social media platforms came after the White House criticized Facebook for allowing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to be posted on its platform.
Skepticisms were fueled by both false posts spread by anti-vaccine activists online, and by Republican politicians claiming the vaccinations are part of attempts at government control.
“Everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, telling that Facebook and others are far from doing enough.
“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms,” Psaki said, without identifying those dozen posters.
Because of this, the White House has “proposed that they create a robust enforcement strategy that bridges their properties and provides transparency about the rules,” Psaki said.
At this time, the U.S. sees an increase in new cases.
“Unvaccinated Americans account for virtually all recent Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths,” said Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator.
Most of the infections at this time are driven by the highly-contagious Delta variant.
In response, Facebook, which has partnered with an army of independent third-party fact checkers to help it clean up its contents, does not agree with the White House's claims.
“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,” said Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen.
“The fact is that more than two billion people have viewed authoritative information about Covid-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. 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.”
For its part, Facebook said that its “aggressive action against misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines" has been done "protect public health,” and that it had removed “more than 18 million pieces of Covid misinformation,” and disabled accounts spreading false information.
According to its own survey, 85% of its U.S. users have been or want to be vaccinated, and its efforts have pushed vaccine hesitancy down by 50%, Rosen said.
“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,” Rosen added.
“Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”
