Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, criticized social media platforms for not doing enough to stop the spread of “misinformation” online.
“The speed, scale and sophistication with which it is spreading and impacting our health is really unprecedented,” Murthy said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “And it’s happening largely, in part, aided and abetted by social-media platforms.”
The Surgeon General did acknowledge that these platforms were already working to censor but said what they are doing is “not nearly enough.”
“There are people who are super-spreaders of misinformation,” he said. “And there are algorithms, still, which continue to serve up more and more misinformation to people who encounter it the first time. These are things that companies can and must change. And I think they have a moral responsibility to do so quickly and transparently.”
Murthy’s remarks came shortly after Facebook released its “content transparency report,” revealing the most viewed content.
Facebook decided not to release a similar report for the first quarter of 2021 as it would have resulted in bad PR. The most-viewed content in the first quarter was a link to a story about a CDC investigation into the death of a doctor who died shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
