Facebook pushes back against Biden claim that social media is 'killing people'

By Shamim AdamUpdated July 18, 2021 — 4.21pmWashington: Facebook has pushed back against the Biden administration’s denouncing of the social media giant for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines, escalating tensions between the Silicon Valley company and the White House.In a blog post on Saturday (Sunday AEST), Facebook called for the administration to stop “finger-pointing” and laid out what it had done to encourage users to get vaccinated. The social network also detailed how it had clamped down on lies about the vaccines, which officials have said led people to refuse to be vaccinated.Facebook has been criticised for allowing anti-vaccination sentiment to thrive.Credit:AP“The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice-president of integrity, said in the post. “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased.”Rosen added that the company’s data showed that 85 per cent of its users in the United States had been or wanted to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. While President Joe Biden had set a goal of getting 70 per cent of Americans vaccinated by July 4, which the White House fell short of, “Facebook is not the reason this goal…
Read More