Rift opens between White House honchos and Facebook honchos [always, the honchos]

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Cecilia Kang, Inside the White House-Facebook Rift Over Vaccine Misinformation, NYTimes, Aug. 10, 2021.

The meetings have involved the top ranks on both sides, according to the people, including those close to Facebook and those with ties to the administration, who would only speak anonymously because the conversations were private. In March, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, called Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, and discussed health misinformation. The White House grew so frustrated by Facebook’s answers in the internal meetings that at one point it demanded to hear from the data scientists at the company instead of lobbyists. And the nation’s top doctor presented the social media representatives with anecdotes from doctors and nurses who had interacted with Covid-19 patients who believed incorrect information.

Talks between the White House and Facebook continue. But the rift has complicated an already tumultuous relationship just as Mr. Biden faces a setback on fighting the coronavirus. The White House missed its goal of having 70 percent of American adults with at least one vaccination shot by July 4, and the highly contagious Delta variant has fueled a rise in cases since then. The United States averaged more than 110,000 new daily cases in the past week, up from about 13,000 a month ago. In response, the administration has reversed some public health advice, leaving many Americans perplexed over requirements like wearing masks. [...]

“We’ve engaged with Facebook since the transition on this issue,” said Mike Gwin, a White House spokesman, “and we’ve made clear to them when they haven’t lived up to our, or their own, standards and have actively elevated content on their platforms that misleads the American people.”

Facebook has pushed back strongly against the White House’s criticism, accusing the administration in public of scapegoating the company for the administration’s failure to reach its vaccination goals. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the White House hadn’t given the company enough credit for promoting the vaccine. He said the social network had been working with the White House for “many months” to get people vaccinated, introducing features like prominent links to vaccine clinics.

Can we believe any of them? To what extent? Mutual scapegoating? Does FB care about anything beyond racking up views, moving fast & breaking things so the pieces can be converted to $$$? And the government has its own missteps to deal with. It's past the time when chaos can be blamed on 45.