“Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,” a source with direct knowledge about the cooperation told Reuters.
According to Reuters, the protest was organized on Facebook through a page that “promotes debunked claims about the coronavirus pandemic, masks and immunization.” The source said the Biden administration wants to make sure that such material “does not start trending on such platforms and become a broader movement.”
The US is undergoing a period of record-low public trust in traditional media and widespread disillusionment in the two-party political system. The institutional crisis was aggravated by the economic damage done by the Covid-19 pandemic and has sent many people looking for answers to other sources. There is no shortage of these online, offering a simple and inaccurate explanation fitting anyone’s biases.
One could argue that the US establishment has long been among the leading peddlers of such misinformation. Democratic politicians and left-leaning journalists have been for years telling people aggravated by Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 that it happened due to his “collusion” with Russia. The conspiracy theory was never substantiated by actual evidence, but remains as popular as ever, as evidenced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorite saying that with Trump, “all roads lead to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Joe Biden was elected president on a promise to mend rifts left by his predecessor and show competence in handling the Covid-19 crisis.
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