When President Joe Biden said Friday that social networks like Facebook are “killing people” with the viral spread of Covid-19 misinformation, the company tried to defend itself. In a strongly-worded blog post, an executive attempted to redirect people to more positive data, on the ways Facebook has spread good information.
But that didn’t address the critique. While it’s impossible to say whether misinformation on Facebook is actually “killing people,” and Biden walked back his comments on Monday, the problem Biden was flagging is real: Covid-19 misinformation is a big issue on Facebook, and one that hasn’t been fixed. Only Facebook knows how big. The company says it has labeled (but not removed) 167 million posts containing Covid-19 misinformation since the pandemic began, and outside research from Avaaz, a non-profit group that has studied misinformation on the service, found internet users are still finding and engaging with Covid-19 disinformation on Facebook more than anywhere else.
Facebook’s blog post, entitled “Moving Past the Finger Pointing,” argued Biden couldn’t back up his claims with facts. The company even took a shot at the President’s lofty but failed goal to get 70% of Americans vaccinated by July 4, pointing out its own data that shows Facebook users are increasingly interested in getting the vaccine. “The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against Covid-19,” Guy Rosen, vice president of integrity, wrote. “Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”