Facebook says it should not be blamed for US failing to meet vaccine goals
Facebook on Saturday (Jul 17) defended itself against US President Joe Biden's assertion that the social media platform is "killing people" by allowing misinformation about corona virus vaccines to proliferate, saying the facts tell a different story. "The data shows that 85 per cent of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19," Facebook said in a corporate blog post by Guy Rosen, a company vice president. "
President Biden's goal was for 70 per cent of Americans to be vaccinated by Jul 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed." COVID-19 misinformation has spread during the pandemic on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet-owned YouTube. Researchers and lawmakers have long accused Facebook of failing to police harmful content on its platforms.
"They're killing people. ... Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people," Biden told reporters at the White House on Friday when asked about misinformation and what his message was to social media platforms such as Facebook.
