BLUMENTHAL BASHES FACEBOOK, TWITTER

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) slammed Facebook and Twitter Monday over their handling of anti-vaccination content specifically targeting pregnant women after the platforms responded to the senator’s letter pushing them to clamp down on the misinformation campaigns.

“Facebook and Twitter’s playbook is out-of-date, worn-out, and woefully inadequate toward addressing the horrifying abuse and disinformation that continues to spread like wildfire on their platforms,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

The senator wrote to the social media giants last month calling for them to follow through on commitments to remove coronavirus vaccine misinformation in light of reported incidents of anti-vaccine campaigns targeted and harassing pregnant women with false information.

Blumenthal said the platforms’ “vague content moderation policies, ineffective fact checking, inconsistent enforcement, and meaningless labels are cold comfort to the women continuously assailed by vile anti-vaccine hate and life-threatening falsehoods.”