In an ironic twist to the tale of the “Disinformation Dozen” upon whom the White House blames most of the internet’s misinformation, Facebook is taking issue with the idea that they are in any way responsible for facilitating the spread of misinformation on their site.

As reported by the New York Post, Facebook vice president of content policy Monika Bickert issued a statement saying, “People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73 [percent] of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook” … but “there isn’t any evidence to support this claim. Moreover, focusing on such a small group of people distracts from the complex challenges we all face in addressing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.”

Bickert’s statements followed on the heels of White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s comments that the Biden administration had tagged “problematic posts” on Facebook. She also ripped into the report the White House used to focus on the 12 people who supposedly are responsible for all this misinformation, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

The CCDH report “analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users. They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook,” Bickert added — and in truth are responsible for just 0.05% of all vaccine content on its site.

Not to be outdone, the White House “fired back” and accused Facebook of refusing to be “straightforward about how much misinformation is circulating — and being actively promoted — on their platform.”

SOURCE: New York Post August 18, 2021