Uproar As Biden, Others Accuse Tech Giants Of Misinformation About COVID-19 Vaccines

*They are killing people…. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, says President Joe Biden

*Social media giant Facebook fires back against the White House allegation, arguing two billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on its platform

*Dr. Anthony Fauci pleads with consumers, says ‘Delta is much more capable of spreading from person to person than earlier variants’

Gbenga Kayode | ConsumerConnect

Dismayed by a recent surge in the Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection cases among Americans, especially the young ones who reportedly refuse to be vaccinated, President Joe Biden’s administration is blaming social media platforms for the disturbing development.

ConsumerConnect learnt President Biden late last Friday at the White House in response to a reporter’s question about misinformation on the social media related his observation by accusing the social media platforms.

The United States (US) President in underscoring the charge repeatedly said: “They’re killing people.

“The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that’s — they’re killing people.”

Facebook responds to Biden’s allegation

Following Biden’s sweeping accusation regarding the social media operations in the country, Facebook in a statement responded to the charge instantaneously.

The leading social media network said the President’s indictment was not supported by the facts.

The company noted that it rather has contributed to the success of the vaccination programme in the United States.

Related-  Public Health: Facebook under investigation for COVID-19 Vaccine misinformation

“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. Period,” Facebook said in the statement.

A spokesperson for Facebook also explained that the company “removed more than 18 million pieces of COVID misinformation, removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules, and connected more than 2 billion people to reliable information about COVID-19 and COVID vaccines across our apps.”

Not done with its defensive responses to the US Government accusation regarding the Coronavirus vaccines, Facebook again, pushed back even harder Saturday, July 17, 2021, according to report.

Read Also- Facebook yanks 1.3billion fake accounts from platform over misinformation

The company’s Vice President Guy Rosen in a blog post also reeled off some numbers suggesting that Facebook users are not being misled.

Rosen wrote that “the data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”

The ‘Big Tech’ coming under fire across continents

ConsumerConnect reports that in view of this development and sundry other issues in several economies across the world, Facebook and other large global technology companies, otherwise known as the ‘Big Tech’, have increasingly found themselves in the government’s crosshairs.

Some of the ‘Big Tech’

The backlashes against the tech giants are quite perceptible from India, Russia, Europe, EU and Nigeria in recent times.

Related: Angry reactions as Nigerian Government suspends Twitter operations ‘indefinitely’

It was learnt, for instance, Democrats in the US generally, consider companies such as Facebook and Google too large and too dominant for their liking.

Likewise, Republicans tend to be suspicious of Big Tech’s politics, claiming that these platforms tend to censor conservative viewpoints.

Facebook, Google and Amazon already face antitrust lawsuits by Federal and state governments in the US.

A Federal judge, late June 2021, dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust suit against Facebook.

The judge ruled that prosecutors had failed to explain what social networking is or how they determined that Facebook controls more than 60% of the market.

He also said the FTC had failed to show how Facebook’s business model harms the public, noting that the public pays nothing to use Facebook.

Nevertheless, a week later, 37 states, led by both Republicans and Democrats, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google parent company Alphabet.

The regulators claimed that the Google Play Store constitutes “illegal and anticompetitive conduct” that gives it monopoly power in mobile app distribution.

Anthony Fauci ‘pleading’ with people to get vaccine shots as Delta variant spreads

Perhaps frustrated by the reported declining response to continuous vaccinations against the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, foremost American scientist and infectious-disease expert, has said that the Delta variant of the novel Coronavirus is causing a significant increase in infections in the US, and that the Biden administration is “practically pleading” with people to get vaccinated.

Related: Delta variant of COVID-19 likely to become dominant strain in US in weeks ─CDC

Fauci, who stated this during an interview on Bloomberg Television, disclosed that ‘Delta’ is much more capable of spreading from person to person than earlier variants.

The infectious disease expert has restated that vaccines can protect people from clinically significant disease as the damaging Coronavirus.

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