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Facebook is in collaboration with the Biden administration, according to Fox News.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg claims that he contacted the Biden administration regarding ways that he could assist with the COVID-19 response.
Zuckerberg said, “Our team at Facebook has already reached out to the incoming administration to help with the COVID response in any way that we can. I’m sure there will be a few important things that we can do together.”
“We’re already planning a push around authoritative information on vaccines.”
Zuckerberg plans on promoting accurate information regarding vaccines and climate change.
Biden has allegedly alluded that he will fight hard against Facebook’s misinformation crisis.
Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate campaign groups said, “Mr. Zuckerberg is deeply hypocritical to claim he is offering to help with the Coronavirus vaccine, when his companies, Facebook and Instagram, host the world’s most renowned anti-vaxxers and amplify their toxic lies into tens of millions of users’ timelines.”
“If Mark Zuckerberg really wanted to help, he could remove the identified pages and groups, some with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, which spread lies about vaccines, as laid out clearly in our report on the Anti-Vaxx Industry.”
More from Business Insider:
Company sources told the Financial Times that Facebook was considering putting a banner at the top of its site encouraging users to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
In October, the social-media giant launched a new “preventative health tool” that directed users toward information about getting flu shots.
Both Moderna and Pfizer have filed for emergency authorization of their COVID-19 vaccines, so it’s possible Facebook will roll out something similar once vaccines become available to the public.
Facebook also announced in October it was changing its policy to ban ads that discourage people from getting vaccinated.
The platform does not fully ban anti-vaccination — also known as “anti-vaxx” — content, though in February it said it would start making pages and groups that regularly promote anti-vaxx posts more difficult to find in its search results.
Ahmed said if Facebook were serious about vaccine misinformation, it should remove prominent sources of misinformation from its platform. “If Mark Zuckerberg really wanted to help, he could remove the identified pages and groups, some with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, which spread lies about vaccines, as laid out clearly in our report on the Anti-Vaxx Industry,” Ahmed said.
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