WASHINGTON — Facebook pushed back on Saturday against the Biden administration’s denouncing of the social media giant for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines, escalating tensions between the Silicon Valley company and the White House. In a blog post, Facebook called for the administration to stop “finger-pointing” and laid out what it had done to encourage users to get vaccinated. The social network also detailed how it had clamped down on lies about the vaccines, which officials have said led people to refuse to be vaccinated. “The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said in the post. While President Biden had set a goal of getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July 4, which the White House fell short of, “Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed,” Mr. Rosen said.

Source: New York Times July 18, 2021 02:15 UTC