The White House is reviewing policies to see if social media companies are legally liable for misinformation about COVID-19, President Joe Biden’s communications director said Tuesday.
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called misinformation about the coronavirus an “urgent” public health threat and Biden’s administration has previously noted the importance of mitigating false information being spread online.
Tuesday, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said platforms like Twitter and Facebook should do more to tamp down on false information.
“We’re reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable,” Bedingfield told MSNBC. “And I think you’ve heard the president speak very aggressively about this. He understands this is an important part of the ecosystem.”
Bedingfield also targets conservative news outlets in the video.
Supporters say Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be amended to make social platforms liable when users post false information that could cause harm to Americans.
“It is a big and complicated ecosystem and everyone bears responsibility to ensure that we are not providing people with bad information about a vaccine that will save their lives,” Bedingfield added.
A study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found people who rely on conservative media have much less confidence in public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and are much more likely to believe misinformation about the vaccines.
To date, the United States has seen more than 34 million coronavirus cases and more than 600,000 deaths, the most in the world.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters that people who have not been vaccinated “remain susceptible,” especially from the Delta variants, and are at elevated risk of severe illness and death.
Data show that more than 99% of the people who have died of COVID-19 “over the last few months” were unvaccinated, Walensky added.
In a report last week, Murthy called for increased monitoring of misinformation by technology platforms.
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In other words, they should be legally liable if it is in the interest of the government. Alternative health and naturopathic doctors not affiliated with the CDC nor WHO—and not necessarily in agreement with mainstream medicine—may very well have accurate and valuable information for the consumer that is not published by the government for self-serving reasons.
And if they should be legally liable for COVID “misinformation”, should they not also be legally liable for censoring free speech of a Conservative nature? Just how interested is the government in protecting the rights of its citizens?
Protecting the rights of citizens is not even on the list of what is important to this administration. Destroying this country, and it’s citizens, is first on the list of what is important to this administration.
Exactly. HELL< if the left had their way, ONLY LIBERALS WOULD BE ALLOWED ON anti-social media.
“White House Says Social Media Platforms Should Be Legally Liable For Covid Misinformation”
OK, then the White House Should Be Legally Liable For its deliberate Misinformation and Lies!!
“White House Says Social Media Platforms Should Be Legally Liable For Covid Misinformation.”,,,,,,And the Whitehouse should be politically congratulated in properly naming the new more powerful COVID variant which is called “Lambda”,,,,signifying all the fearful sheep that they and the media indoctrinate to control in media word salad and in fear. This time they got it right.
If the Whitehouse and their media were held legally responsible for their own misinformation they would all be in jail. How about the COVID misinformation that let’s in a million unvetted illegals carrying all kinds of diseases then bussing them into the interior of the USA. SHreveport just got 6 Haitians dropped off at a bus stop by the feds and left to their own sick devices on how to survive.
and they wonder why there are more cases of covid in the hospitals. Stop moving the covid infected illegals all over the nation and you will see the cases go down.
Do you really think that the covid infected illegals won’t go to hospitals for treatment, of course they will, it’s free covered by taxpayers.
Hell, for all we know, the biden admin is WILLFULLY WELCOMING IN ALL these sick illegal invaders, for the Express purpose, of SHIPPING THEM ACROSS OUR NATION< to ensure the covid keeps spreading and infecting folks, JUST SO THEY CAN KEEP UP THEIR MASK AND VACCINE MANDATES, so as to rule us for 4 more years in this manner…
In other words, we will get the “Pravda Truth” from the Biden Administration and all other commentary and opinions will be censored. The criminal communists are running Washington DC.
This is not the truth you are looking for..
What is really being stated is, “If you do not espouse the official government propaganda you will face consequences!” This is all to thwart any questioning or debating of the FACTS about COVID. The government’s problem is it has contradicted itself so many times in the past, even on proven facts, that who’s to tell what is true from what is misinformation? Social media is being told to be the Pravda of the Biden administration, the official ‘news’ source to the exclusion of all else.
“If you do not espouse the official government propaganda you will face consequences!”
If you try to say something that the Democrat Party disagrees with…..
It will be censored and deleted.
Biden and the rest of the scum in his administration should be legal liable for all the misinformation they spew on all subjects.
PITY there’s no one in govt, who has the BALLS TO ENFORCE that.
I guess Walensky will have to be banned for providing misinformation, since the 99% figure she gives is contradicted by reports from hospitals around the country and in the UK. Figures for hospitalized cases range from 20% vaccinated to 47% vaccinated. In other words, the vaccination doesn’t provide much protection at all. Of course, she does specify people dying rather than catching the disease, so we need to know how many people have died of covid and from what demographic group before we know what that 99% means. We also need to know how many people have died of the “vaccine” shots per capita and compare it with the number of covid-only deaths per capita.
The trouble is that they’ve gotten so used to lying and getting away with it that they don’t even bother coming up with believable lies any more.
AHH, but didn’t you get the memo.
ITS ONLY Misinformation when WE Conservatives say it.
IF liberals do, its FACT>
The gubment should be legally liable for Covid misinformation. Let’s start with Fauci. It will NEVER happen but we can fantasize.
How’s about all those who work in the CDC WHO FLAT OUT instructed hospitals to FAKE UP THE #S of covid positive deaths etc, JUST TO “KEEP the #s artifically inflated, so to make it more scary!”