White House comms director Kate Bedingfield said social media companies should be held accountable for publishing misleading info on vaccine
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said on Tuesday that social media companies should be held accountable for publishing misleading information on the COVID vaccine.
She also said the administration is reviewing Section 230, a section of the law that gives tech companies blanket legal protections for content posted on their platforms.
'Social media companies have a responsibility,' Bedingfield said on MSNBC's Morning Joe, echoing a message that has come out of the White House this week as they try to raise the vaccination rate.
She confirmed the administration is reviewing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
'We're reviewing that and certainly they should be held accountable. I think you heard the president speak very aggressively about this,' she said. 'It is also the responsibility of the people creating the content. Again I go back to there are conservative news outlets creating irresponsible content sharing misinformation about the virus that's getting shared on these platforms. So it is a big and complicated ecosystem and everybody bears responsibility.'
The Communications Decency Act, which sets the laws governing the internet, was written in 1996 when companies like Google and Facebook didn't exist. Tech companies are fighting to keep the blanket protections provided by the law as there is a rising call to increase regulation of them.
Section 230 is credited with allowing the modern internet to exist.
Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are heavily dependent on Section 230 to build their businesses and boost their profits. Both companies have increased their internal regulations of user content this election year in the face of the growing threat of federal regulation.
Donald Trump pushed to repeal the law when he was president. Most Republican senators - and even some Democrats - said it needs to be reformed. Trump is currently suing social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for removing him from their platforms.
The White House is pushing back against vaccine misinformation as COVID cases are on the rise across the United States. The U.S. recorded 52,111 new cases on Monday with a seven-day rolling average of 34,682,
