‘Killing people’ remark was call for big tech to act, says Joe Biden

The administration has increasingly seized on false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines as a driver of that hesitance.

U.S. President Joe Biden tempered his assessment that social media giants are “killing people” by hosting misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms, saying on Monday that he hoped they would not take it “personally” and instead would act to save lives. While companies like Facebook defend their practices and say they’re helping people around the world access verified information about the shots, the White House says they haven’t done enough to stop misinformation that has helped slow the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. to a trickle. It comes as the U.S. sees a rise in virus cases and deaths among those who haven’t gotten a shot, in what officials call an emerging “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”