By all means, watch he full video below. Listen to the opening with the surgeon general declaring misinformation a public health threat.
Who would have thought something like that was even possible in a free society?
But it’s just words, right?
Except it’s not. It’s a pretense for things to follow. Like reasons to shut you up and make you accept them shoving their own agenda straight down your throat. It’s the beginning of your first amendment openly, publicly, disappearing.
You don’t even have to read through the lines anymore. Psaki stands up straight, and speaks plainly about how big brother is actively silencing anyone against the government’s narrative on Covid. This will certainly simultaneously shape the landscape of social media. It’s social media no more but an admitted government propaganda machine. Or hasn’t it been that now for some time?
Start at 16:20 and listen to it yourself. Then tell me, and try to convince yourself, that we on the right, are just paranoid. It isn’t paranoid conspiracy. It’s fact, and here they are tell it to you to your face.
Oddly. some of you still won’t believe it’s true. Even when they eventually censor you.
Q Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies and are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation, because we’ve seen, from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms.
MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.
In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken — or we’re working to take, I should say — from the federal government: We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect — to connect medical experts with popular — with popular — who are popular with their audiences with — with accurate information and boost trusted content. So we’re helping get trusted content out there.
We also created the COVID-19 — the COVID Community Corps to get factual information into the hands of local messengers, and we’re also investing, as you all have seen in the President’s, the Vice President’s, and Dr. Fauci’s time in meeting with influencers who also have large reaches to a lot of these target audiences who can spread and share accurate information.
You saw an example of that yesterday. I believe that video will be out Fri- — tomorrow. I think that was your question, Steve, yesterday; I did a full follow-up there.
There are also proposed changes that we have made to social media platforms, including Facebook, and those specifically are four key steps.
One, that they measure and publicly share the impact of misinformation on their platform. Facebook should provide, publicly and transparently, data on the reach of COVID-19 — COVID vaccine misinformation. Not just engagement, but the reach of the misinformation and the audience that it’s reaching.
That will help us ensure we’re getting accurate information to people. This should be provided not just to researchers, but to the public so that the public knows and understands what is accurate and inaccurate.
Second, that we have recommended — proposed that they create a robust enforcement strategy that bridges their properties and provides transparency about the rules. So, about — I think this was a question asked before — there’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including Facebook — ones that Facebook owns.
Third, it’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know, information travels quite quickly on social media platforms; sometimes it’s not accurate. And Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts — posts that will be within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.
Finally, we have proposed they promote quality information sources in their feed algorithm. Facebook has repeatedly shown that they have the levers to promote quality information. We’ve seen them effectively do this in their algorithm over low-quality information and they’ve chosen not to use it in this case. And that’s certainly an area that would have an impact.
So, these are certainly the proposals. We engage with them regularly and they certainly understand what our asks are.
Q And then, one of the problems with vaccines right now is that they become politicized. You guys — the White House has obviously made the calculation that it’s important to be more aggressive in confronting this information, but is there at all a concern that that could backfire and further contribute to politicization? And is there anything that you can do to prevent that at this point?
MS. PSAKI: Well, you’re abs- — you’re absolutely right, I should say, Alex, in that we have to be very careful and we are mindful of being quite careful of not politicizing the effectiveness of vaccines, the fact that they can save lives — young people, old people, middle-of-the-road people.
It’s important for us — we’ve made a calculation to push back on misinformation. You’re right. But that’s one of the reasons, as Dr. Murthy was conveying, we have empowered, engaged, funded local voices, because they are often the most trusted voices — doctors, medical experts, clergy — you know, people who are members of — civic leaders in communities.
That’s where we are putting most of our resources, even as we are working to combat misinformation that’s traveling online or traveling, unfortunately, out of the mouth of elected officials from time to time.
And it just gets to be more fun when Psaki is asked to explain, “do the people you are targeting know that you are targeting them?
Well, of course they don’t.
Wake up if you haven’t already. Pay attention. Vote accordingly.
Communism, Socialism, Marxism… not my bag.
I need a warning label. “Don’t play well with libs.”
