White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki's announcement was met with flat disapproval after revealing that the Biden administration is coordinating with Facebook to flag posts that spread COVID-19 disinformation. This was in response to a question regarding the Biden administration's appeal for tech companies to be more assertive when overseeing misinformation.
Psaki has reportedly escalated the conservative war with Big Tech. There has been rising hatred among conservatives against social media companies' efforts to stifle content they find unfavorable under the guise that it is a result of noble and consistent policy. An example is to avoid provoking of violence.
How the US Government is Ramping Up Efforts Against Disinformation
She stated the federal government has bolstered its disinformation detection and research. For identifying and suppressing content deemed factually incorrect surrounding the COVID vaccine, she discussed four key steps the Biden administration is taking to hold Facebook and other social media giants responsible.
The Biden administration is regularly in touch with social media platforms to handle the situation, disclosed Psaki. She expounded, "We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team -- given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic," reported Fox News.
Criticism
The concern is double standards as it can be recalled that the former President Donald Trump was banned from using Twitter. The micro-blogging site explicitly cited "the risk of further incitement of violence." However, Twitter has still enabled Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to use the platform to provoke violence. During the latest conflict in Gaza, one instance was when he egged on Hamas to fire rockets in Israel, reported National Review.
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The call for censorship and the admission of the White House press secretary of government involvement reportedly follows flip-flops from health officials who contradicted themselves during the pandemic. They disagreed on issues involving censorship that later gained credibility, including the theory that novel coronavirus originated from a Chinese lab and mask efficacy, reported New York Post.
According to Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich, Psaki stated the White House has been flagging "problematic posts" on Facebook they tout to be coronavirus misinformation. She added as a reminder that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, worked with Facebook to dismiss the lab leak theory. She said it was fact-based for over a year.
The matter holding conservatives back from entirely embracing ideas including suing Big Tech companies on antitrust grounds or blowing up Section 230 liability shielding for social media companies is that they have been internally split up. The issue has turned the traditional small-government conservatives, who are reserve to target private companies in decision-making regarding the running of their businesses, and MAGA-friendly conservatives, who are earnest to wield government power in order to get their favorable outcomes into becoming adversaries.
