Is Facebook Killing People? Apparently, That’s Up for Debate.

Last week President Biden made headlines for stating the obvious. Disinformation on Facebook is killing people, telling reporters: ​​”They’re killing people. The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.” Facebook for some reason decided to respond aggressively with both a statement and a blog post attacking Biden and defending their own Covid cred. By Monday Biden had walked his statement back, and elites in media and the disinformation space were actually debating whether or not the social media platforms, but mostly Facebook are in fact killing people.

Let me settle the debate. Yes.

Disinformation on social media is killing people. This was true long before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. Facebook was at least partially responsible for a genocide in Myanmar, and by the company’s own admission admits that Facebook was used to incite offline violence against The Rohingya people. Given all we know about Facebook’s actions (of lack of them) concerning both disinformation and hate speech I’m gobsmacked that we’re even still having this debate. You could argue that Biden’s remarks weren’t productive or helpful, but it was a true statement.

Meanwhile vaccine disinformation on social media, especially Facebook remains a catastrophic problem. The New York Times's Sheera Frenkel reports…