The White House staff told Facebook to hand over its data on misinformation and vaccine skepticism as a “good will gesture,” but President Joe Biden‘s aides said the Big Tech monopoly will not provide any “meaningful data,” Reclaim The Net reported.
Biden administration officials said the White House wants the data so that the federal government can better respond to false information and convince people to receive the COVID-19 shot.
White House officials were “begging” for information from Facebook as well as Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp.
At a meeting between Facebook executives and White House staff, Biden’s staff asked for data about the people on these three platforms who view information that Facebook has deemed “misinformation,” people who Facebook believes are still undecided about receiving the shot, and people who see information that Facebook is trying to censor.
Facebook offered some data to the White House officials.
“It’s not that they wouldn’t provide data,” said Andy Slavitt, former senior pandemic adviser on the White House’s coronavirus team and a participant in the meetings. “It’s that they wouldn’t provide meaningful data, and you end up with a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily have value.”
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the social media platform has partnered with academic researchers to identify trends in resistance to COVID-19 vaccinations.
Stone said the White House’s idea that “we are trying to hide or prevent research into the role our platform plays is anecdotal and inconsistent with the facts.”
The White House staff’s meetings with Facebook executives have been “tense,” particularly because Biden said Facebook was “killing people” by allowing vaccine skepticism to spread on the platform.
