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Biden Says Platforms Like Facebook Are 'Killing People' With COVID-19 Misinformation (theverge.com) 259

Posted by BeauHD from the he's-not-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The White House escalated its fight against vaccine misinformation on Friday, with President Biden directly criticizing Facebook and other platforms for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread -- and consequently raising the ongoing death toll from the deadly pandemic. Asked for a message to platforms like Facebook, Biden replied, "They're killing people ... the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they're killing people." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of the president's comments. The full exchange is embedded [here]. "We will not be distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts," said a Facebook spokesperson. "The fact is that more than 2 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," the spokesperson continued. "Period."
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Biden Says Platforms Like Facebook Are 'Killing People' With COVID-19 Misinformation More

Biden Says Platforms Like Facebook Are 'Killing People' With COVID-19 Misinformation

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  • The gov violating the 1st Amendment by proxy? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kbaud ( 1001076 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:08AM (#61591265)
    Facebook/Twitter are public companies and they should have the ability to decide what content they will allow on their website. If you don't like it, you can go somewhere else. However, this statement could be better informed. In China, Facebook and Twitter have been forced by the government to crack down on free speech, promote disinformation and downplay the atrocities against the Uighur Muslims. Is this Facebook's fault? They have to follow the government rules if they want money. https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] Here in the US, the government is prevented from reducing our free speech by the First Amendment. As Shapiro says, they Instead, have put pressure on the social media companies to do it for them. Calling them before multiple hearings. threatening them with sanctions. etc. These companies are being forced and therefore it is actually our federal government failing to uphold the First Amendment via proxy. Or is it? Can Facebook/Twitter have it both ways in these 2 countries? Section 230 gave an exception to the tech bros and hurt conventional news. It was supposed to encourage more discourse. More discovery and open conversation. But just like in China, it doesn't work if they just become another agent of the Government.

    • Re:The gov violating the 1st Amendment by proxy? (Score:5, Informative)

      by clampolo ( 1159617 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @10:09AM (#61591535)
      Actually, they gave up the right to claim they have free speech. The government has admitted to meeting with Facebook about deciding what posts to censor. The Supreme Court has already decided that if a private company is acting as a government proxy, then they are required to obey the same rules as the government. Therefore they are not permitted to censor speech.

  • Well, he's not wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:10AM (#61591271)

    Sophie Zhang has the best response to this:
    https://twitter.com/szhang_ds/... [twitter.com]

    What if every defendant responded like FB did?

    Prosecutor: "Did you poison twenty people to death by failing to rinse bleach off of dishes?"

    Defendant: "I have washed dishes 40,000 times and believe deeply in clean dishes. The facts show that I'm making our dishes cleaner"

    Sophie is a former FaceBook employee, current whistleblower and activist that called out Facebook for their roles in genocide in Myanmar and Ethiopia as well as their role in election misinformation and Facebook's lack of interaction and overall concern in policing their own platform. I think I could best sum up her work with her pointing out that spam was considered a bigger problem than genocide.

    • Re: Well, he's not wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:41AM (#61591339)
      However the government cannot participate in censorship NOR can they ask a third party to do it for them. What Biden is saying and publicly asking for is countless legal lawsuits. When Trump tried doing similar crap some peoples where very vocal about it, and sadly I see those same people hiding and not speaking out now. Just more examples of the Tribalism they claim to not be part of. FB had the chance to do it on their own. They were probably even asked to do it illegally behind closed doors. Now the government is publicly asking them to do it with hopes that peer pressure forces their hand. None of that absolves them of the liability of asking a third party to perform an act that the government itself is explicitly forbidden from taking.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Curtman ( 556920 ) *

        When Trump tried doing similar crap

        Trumps crap was not similar. He posted the BS on the platforms and they banned him from them!!

        • Actually long before that he waged war on the media in a very public way. He even thought he coined the term fake news. The difference was that he was trying to wage an economic boycott to get them to write flowery articles about him. (Narcissist much?)

      • However the government cannot participate in censorship NOR can they ask a third party to do it for them. What Biden is saying and publicly asking for is countless legal lawsuits. When Trump tried doing similar crap some peoples where very vocal about it, and sadly I see those same people hiding and not speaking out now. Just more examples of the Tribalism they claim to not be part of. FB had the chance to do it on their own. They were probably even asked to do it illegally behind closed doors. Now the government is publicly asking them to do it with hopes that peer pressure forces their hand. None of that absolves them of the liability of asking a third party to perform an act that the government itself is explicitly forbidden from taking.

        I'm not sure why you think it is illegal for the government to ask a third party to do something they might not be able to do. They are not asking facebook to do anything illegal, since it is a private platform and they get to decide the rules. Facebook is not required to let anyone say what they want how they want and when they want. Facebook can decide to do it or not do it.

        • How do you not know this? The government cannot ask someone to do something it itself is explicitly forbidden from doing. It is the same as actually doing it in the eyes of the court. Biden is a government actor. He cannot ask someone else to delete posts he does not like. This was recently upheld when trump had some followers blocked on Twitter. He could not personally block them, nor could he ask Twitter to so the blocking for him.

          • How do you not know this? The government cannot ask someone to do something it itself is explicitly forbidden from doing.

            You mean such as telling phone companies they must install wiretap equipment, without a warrant [nytimes.com], and scooping up everyone's phone messages?

            • If you keep rolling over and let them keep violating the law they will keep taking and taking and taking your freedoms one by one. You have to stand up every time and say I dont fucking think so assholes. Dont be a sheep. At one time office discrimination occurred too. Just because people have allowed themselves to be abused does not magically mean they get to continue to do it. If necessary vote them out when they do it. How do you think bush lost the house in 2006?? People got tired of that shit. Then the

        • I'm not sure why you think it is illegal for the government to ask a third party to do something they might not be able to do.

          The implication is that if it's behind closed doors, there is a quid pro quo.

      • > However the government cannot participate in censorship NOR can they ask a third party to do it for them.

        There have always been very narrow exceptions when it comes to public health and safety. It's unlikely but not impossible that the spread of misinformation related to epidemics/pandemics, where the lives of millions of people are at risk, could fall within the purview of government censorship.

        Of course every accusation of misinformation would require a lawsuit to settle...
        =Smidge=

        • That is entirely speculative and fails to meet the standard to claim millions of lives are at stake. First you have to prove that, in fact, social media is the ONLY reason people are not getting vaccinated and that without social media these people would magically be vaccinated. That is a burden of proof they cannot meet. It would be FAR easier to make the lives-at-stake claim to legally force people to be vaccinated against their will than suggest violation of the 1A is necessary to save lives. For one is

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nuggz ( 69912 )

      Well that's actually a good example
      You're not supposed to rinse the bleach off the dishes.
      https://blog.scoutingmagazine.... [scoutingmagazine.org]

      The thing is that there will always be those complaining about the 20 failures, and ignoring the 40,000 successes.

      The real question is the net benefit, I personally believe that free speech makes a big contribution to society, some good, some bad, but on balance it's positive.

      Which trade offs are you willing to make?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nucrash ( 549705 )

        That's an easy decision to make if you are not the one dying because someone is killing you based off of misinformation spread on some social media platform.

        The Rohingya genocide only killed 25,000+ people. I guess that's small compared to the number of 2.85 billion Facebook users. I haven't added up information from what happened in Ethiopia, or counted those who died in the Philippines from the Detuerte and his drug war because he credits Facebook for his election. I haven't added people who died from in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        You're not supposed to rinse the bleach off the dishes.

        It's not straight bleach, it's a bucket of water with a few drops of bleach in it, just enough to sterilize the rinse water.

        the 40,000 successes.

        Successes compared to what control group?

      • I personally believe that free speech makes a big contribution to society

        But that's irrelevant, because this isn't about whether freedom of speech is good or bad. That's a false narrative that certain groups have been pushing so they can accuse the government of censorship and opposing free speech.

        First, whose speech are we talking about? Facebook's or their users'? I'm not too worried about what Facebook users say. Yes, people tell lies all the time, but I'd be very cautious about trying to prevent it. And I wouldn't blame Facebook for what their users do. The real proble

  • Long as we're willing to cast that critical eye towards every other response. There's a lot of hands in the "misinformation" jar.

  • Biden replied, "They're killing people ... the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they're killing people."

    First off, what a sad response. Shifting blame on social media? Haven't heard shit that weak since Metalli-Napster. As if social media hasn't represented the arms dealer profiting from all sides for years now. I'll bet you'll keep taking those fat campaign contributions while you grant this mega-corp free tax havens around the world, won't you?

    Also, try and be realistic and show some empathy for the vaccinated and those who cannot or do not qualify for a vaccine who are still getting sick and sometimes

    • You still have 90 days to prove you're not completely full of shit. Otherwise, you're gone.And then what, O great political sage? Another election? Who gets to decide if you're "completely full of shit"? You don't seem to be a big fan of representative democracy, but we're all interested in hearing what you'd actually replace it with, other than a bunch of anger.

      • And then what, O great political sage? Another election? Who gets to decide if you're "completely full of shit"?

        How about the voters? Recall seems to work moderately well at the state level, why not at the federal?

        Same for bad laws: Referendum works moderately well, at the state level, too. Why wait for the the Supreme Court to decide that somebody has enough "standing" to bring a case, and they have enough time and feel like it to let it be argued that it's unconstitutional? Just let enough people be u

  • Idiots on social media (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:35AM (#61591327)
    It's not Facebook, it's the idiots on various social media platforms. Not just the people posting, but the people believing it and spreading it. If you put limits on what idiots can post, you may also limit people posting meaningful information. It's hard to find the place where one stops and the other begins.
    • Exactly. Like the idiots who suppressed the anecdotal evidence re Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin in the fight against COVID.

    • Re:Idiots on social media (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @09:53AM (#61591491) Homepage Journal

      What you way would be absolutely true if social media were simply a passive carrier of person to person communication. But it's not passive. Social media in the business of shaping your online behavior, feeding you what it thinks will boost your engagement and ultimately steering you into an online bucket of eyeballs it can sell profitably.

      Facebook, not through any malice, mind you, wraps you up in a bubble of confirmation bias, year by year connecting you not just to your friends and family, but like-minded strangers. Facebook presents *me* with a world full of people who are deeply interested in astronomy -- but I know damn well that the actual world isn't like that. The picture of what is "normal" to think has a powerful influence over people's beliefs. If you were born in the 15th Century, chances are you'd take it as fact that witches magicked away the milk when your cow was dry, or at least it was a sensible possibility to consider.

      • Facebook, not through any malice, mind you, wraps you up in a bubble of confirmation bias, year by year connecting you not just to your friends and family, but like-minded strangers. Facebook presents *me* with a world full of people who are deeply interested in astronomy -- but I know damn well that the actual world isn't like that. The picture of what is "normal" to think has a powerful influence over people's beliefs. If you were born in the 15th Century, chances are you'd take it as fact that witches magicked away the milk when your cow was dry, or at least it was a sensible possibility to consider.

        You unwittingly hit upon exactly the reason that self appointed censors want absolute control over others' agenda. Each thinks that they are the only humans with the wisdom to identify the objective truth (corresponding to their own fears and prejudices, of course) and that the unenlightened, unwashed masses are just simple minded idiots waiting for Facebook to tell them what to do.

    • It's hard to find the place where one stops and the other begins.

      Which is EXACTLY why social media, should never be considered a valid source of news beyond what your crazy uncle is shooting and cooking this weekend for dinner.

      Social media should be in the class of cartoons; fake and unrealistic at best.

  • Remember, when much of this was going on, Trump ran the government. Not always the most trustful institution at times.

  • Wow (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:50AM (#61591355) Journal
    Well, I guess that's one way to pretend that you aren't the one pulling Facebook's strings [time.com] ... or at least in deep ideological sympathy with them.

  • This is what the headline would be in the Trump era.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nucrash ( 549705 )

      Former employees such as Sophie Zhang provided plenty of evidence to the contrary. So any title like that would be easily refuted. The previous president made thousands of false and misleading claims. This president will make several but no where near the level of the previous president. Your comparison of the two is false.

  • Smokescreen for their own communication failures (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yes, misinformation exists on social media, but how do you know it's misinformation? That's a label that can only accurately be attributed to it well after the fact ( as we've seen with things like Hunter's laptop and the lab-leak "conspiracy theory" ), and in any case it's not the government's place to prevent others from seeing that.

    What this really boils down to is a remarkable failure of their own messaging. Let's look at their vaccine message; the way they're trying to push it down everyone's throats

  • I saw someone's FB post get pulled for stating that Pfizer+Moderna were still in phase 3 drug trials in USA (which is a demonstrably true statement)

  • Its a moron removal operation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @09:56AM (#61591499)
    ... and it's kind of working. Leave them be.

  • A private company can choose to censor as they wish but when they do so at the demand of the government then this becomes a 1st Amendment issue.

    Did Trump ask for people to be taken off social media? Someone remind me. I'm seeing "de-platforming" as a common tactic among the Left while the political Right wants everyone to keep talking.

    There is a problem with social media causing emotionally charged posts to be shared with greater vigor than those that are factual. I've seen this with IT help forums I vis

    • when false advertising claims are prosecuted? How is vaccine misinformation any different? Especially when it's done for profit. Either to sell miracle cures or to solicit patreon donations.

      Since when is lying for cash a 1st amendment issue?
      • If it's illegal then prosecute. If it's not illegal then the government should not be pressuring platforms on speech issues.

      • The thing is that FB is indifferent to the truth of what its algorithms promote. They aren't committing classic fraud, which has an intent to deceive; they are spreading misinformation because the truth undermines conservative's worldview and hurts their feelings. I suppose Pfizer and Moderna could sue the big 12 originators of this misinformation, like Dominion sued Fox, Oann, and Newsmax. But Pfizer can't sue Facebook because Section 230 gives FB immunity for user content (unlike Fox, which carefully c

    • but there is this little thing [bbc.com]. And that's one of many, many examples.

      Social media is completely dominated by the right wing. The top 10 Facebook posts are always right wing, and multiple C Level employees at social media companies have admitted that they cater to the right wing because the right wing doom scroll more (they use the word "engagement") and are therefore more profitable. Furthermore left wing conspiracy theories get rapidly debunked before they can spread (and carry their payload of adv

    • There is a problem with social media causing emotionally charged posts to be shared with greater vigor than those that are factual. I've seen this with IT help forums I visit where potentially dangerous information gets voted up because people like the cheap option over the more expensive safe option. There are a lot of dangerous USB cables and adapters on the market, and people seem quite willing to put their $500 laptop at risk to try to save $5. People that know nothing of the solution vote up the cheape

    • I'm seeing "de-platforming" as a common tactic among the Left while the political Right wants everyone to keep talking.

      Everyone except: Colin Kaepernick [theguardian.com], Nikole Hannah-Jones [nytimes.com], People who mock Republican Congressmen [sfist.com], People who write about Republican Presidents business dealings [upi.com], People who report things the President doesn't like [nbcnews.com], People who contradict the official Florida narrative on Covid [msn.com], People who criticize Parler [dailydot.com].People running social media companies that do not have facilities in Florida [reason.org] or Texas [texastribune.org]. When Rightists have the power to silence, they use it. When they lack that power, they try to commandeer other people's p

      • Biden's fight against monetized misinformation, however toothless, is costing him politically and will primarily benefit his political opponents.

        Being in control of the White House in a mid-term election always benefits the opposition. There would be no surprise if Republicans gain seats in the House and Senate since that's been the norm for Democrat presidents for a long time.

        What's costing Democrats is calls to de-fund the police, blatant attempts to keep the borders open (during a pandemic!), support for communists in Cuba, more gun grabs, no real desire to address accusations of election fraud, and most of all a POTUS that has to be reminded ev

        • "Election fraud" is a right wing canard designed to give cover to disenfranchising reliably non-Republican voters. The allegations of Trump's attorneys and co-grifters were all thrown out of court--and no, the Republican Secretaries of State were not participating in the Dominion/Hugo Chavez plot. To the extent voter fraud hurts Biden in the midterms, it will be from Trump [thehill.com] supporters [cbsnews.com] voting twice [nbcnews.com] because he asked them to. [msn.com] Certainly it should be prosecuted, but if it costs Dems the House or Senate then the

  • FB didn't address the page views of vaccine misinformation. Period.
  • Twitter and Facebook made a big song and dance about how they were going to control COVID misinformation. e.g. Twitter was going to have some kind of 3 strikes policy. But if you visit these platforms, then it is not hard to find prominent and very toxic accounts which spread nothing but lies and misinformation. Whatever they are doing is simply not enough.

    At least Facebook has a report false health information. Whether they act on it or not I don't know. But Twitter doesn't even have that option I can re

  • If Joe does not like it, try something different, like tail end Covid measures cost recovery. Those not vaccinated by without reasonable to pay increased taxes, decreased deductions, lesser govt benefits paid. Random testing - and if you catch an vaccinated positive, home quarantine for them. Make them pay for pcr tests if they want to go out (France will do this). People will smarten up, if they wear the inconvenience they are causing the rest of us. How about car parking spaces. The un-vaccinated have

  • The best antidote to misinformation.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by strUser_Name ( 7991504 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @11:31AM (#61591759)
    ..is more good information / education. It is how a free society survives (although it be sloppily). Oppression does not result in a free society. IMHO.

  • https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/09... [cnn.com]

    “The most recent Kaiser poll helps illustrate that the vaccine hesitant group doesn’t really lean Republican. Just 20% of the group called themselves Republican with an additional 19% being independents who leaned Republican. The clear majority (61%) were not Republicans (41% said they were Democrats or Democratic leaning independents and 20% were either pure independents or undesignated).”

  • Facebook can make filter, hide, and delete content with current laws and a private company. US Government flagging posts for Facebook to censor is absolutely in violation on the constitution regardless if the post is wrong/right/fact/opinion. Remember the uproar about Trump blocking people? How can you be on the side of one but opposite side of the other. I am shocked how the crowd at Slashdot has evolved over the years to now excusing the impediment of the 1st ammendment as long as it suits thei
  • Hmm, what do all of these social media outlets have in common?
    Republicans.
    There's your issue; anti vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-education, anti-fact, anti-election and anti-American.
    None of those groups are democrats.

  • Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is actively working to kill thousands more in his state. Right now, 20% of all new cases of covid originate in Florida [thehill.com]. But instead of protecting the people of his state, DeSantis is using the surging cases and deaths as a fundraising event [imgur.com].

    Governor Abbott of Texas isn't much better. Cases in Texas are soaring [thehill.com]. But instead of protecting the people of Texas, Abbott is going to make sure energy companies who might lose money during blackouts get reimbursed by the taxpayers [texastribune.org]

  • The US has to use million dollar bombs to kill Syrians, but enemies of the US can kill US citizens by using spicy memes and $10,000 worth of facebook ads. How did the US get so weak?

  • If Facebook did censor these fools, they'd just take that as confirmation that the vaccines really ARE nothing but a conspiracy by Bill Gates to put a 5G tracking chip in you and give you autism. After all, why censor them unless they're RIGHT; and the Martian-pedophile Democratic lizard people are just scared of the secret truth about the vaccines that they've discovered? And they'd all just move off to gab, parler, infowars, stormfront, or whatever they're pushing now; and have their circle-jerk there.

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