President Joe Biden's Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, discussed the administration's stance on misinformation surrounding COVID-19, specifically on social media, on Sunday. This came after Facebook released a report showing its most viewed link discussed a Florida doctor dying from the vaccine.
"The speed, scale, and sophistication with which it is spreading and impacting our health is really unprecedented," Dr. Murthy said. "And it's happening largely, in part, aided and abetted by social media platforms."
Murthy issued a formal advisory where he called misinformation "an urgent threat" to public health.
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Murthy said this after Facebook released its first public quarterly report showing the most viewed posts in the United States for April, May, and June, the New York Times reported. This was an effort to push back against the White House publicly using the company as a scapegoat.
The most viewed link on the platform was a news story with a headline suggesting that a coronavirus vaccine was at fault for the death of a doctor in Florida. The article was used to question the vaccine's safety, something the White House is actively fighting against.
Murthy sees articles like this circulating as a threat and says that "It is costing us in terms of people's health."
In the past, Biden's administration has publicly and aggressively pressured social media companies to show more data about false and misleading information that their users post. At one point, Biden accused Facebook of "killing people" when the company allowed incorrect information to circulate on the website. However, he quickly walked back this statement.
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When it came to the article circulating on Facebook, Murthy said that it has reinforced that "there is a lot of misinformation circulating on these sites."
"I will readily say that the sites have recognized that this is a challenge, and they've stepped up to do some things to reduce the spread of misinformation. And I credit them for that," Dr. Murthy said. "But it's not nearly enough."
"There are people who are superspreaders of misinformation," he added. "And there are algorithms, still, which continue to serve up more and more misinformation to people who encounter it the first time. These are things that companies can and must change. And I think they have a moral responsibility to do so quickly and transparently."
Executives from the top of Facebook, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, have said that the platform has been working to remove misinformation surrounding COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.