After Facebook's Oversight Board upheld the company's ban on former President Trump using the site, the White House stated on Wednesday that social networking sites would do better to shield the public against "disinformation" and "misinformation."
The board ruled Wednesday to keep Trump off of Facebook and Instagram, but made the dubious assertion that it was "not appropriate" for Facebook to arbitrarily and broadly prescribe "indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension."
The board granted Facebook six months to reconsider the "arbitrary" indefinite ban. It noted in a tweet that Facebook had "violated its own rules."
Fortunately, the former President's latest platform has been launched at the right moment. Trump would be able to communicate with his supporters even without his Facebook and Twitter pages.
White House Backs Facebook's Blanket Ban On Trump
When asked about the board's decision on Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the White House would not have "any comment on the future of the former president's social media platform," but that social media sites have a "responsibility" to safeguard people from disinformation.
Referring to "COVID-19, vaccines, and elections," Psaki said that "major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation and misinformation."
"And we've seen that over the past several months, broadly speaking. I'm not placing any blame on any individual or group," Psaki said, adding that they've seen it from a variety of outlets.
President Biden, according to Psaki, "supports better privacy protections and a robust antitrust program."
"His view is that there's more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation, disinformation, damaging, sometimes life-threatening information, is not going out to the American public," she continued.
But when questioned about concerns regarding social media censorship, she responded that the White House is, "of course, a believer in First Amendment rights."
"I think what the decisions are that the social media platforms need to make, is how they address the disinformation, misinformation, especially related to life-threatening issues like COVID-19 and vaccinations that continue to proliferate on their platforms," she reasoned.
Justified Censorship?
To fight vaccination 'disinformation' on Facebook and Twitter, both companies have taken new measures.
Much as it did in 'helping' people "find information about how to vote during elections," the social networking giant is assisting the public obtain knowledge about right vaccines to counter the impact of novel coronavirus.
Around the time, Facebook stated that it had already deleted 12 million pieces of harmful material from Facebook and Instagram.
In December, Twitter updated their guidelines to prohibit misinformation on COVID-19 vaccinations. They made it clear that they plan to exclude the most malicious misinformation.
Meanwhile, in January, Twitter launched what they called a "community-driven approach" of fact checking information by enabling other users to add notes to tweets deemed as misleading.
As of this time, "Birdwatch" is a beta-testing program and is accessible to a small group of people.
