Facebook exec blames society for COVID misinformation
Longtime Facebook veteran Andrew Bosworth insists that political and COVID-19 misinformation are societal problems rather than issues that have been magnified by social networks.
Facebook and other social networks have played a significant role in vaccine hesitancy and the spread of political misinformation. “Individual humans are the ones who choose to believe or not believe a thing. They are the ones who choose to share or not share a thing,” Bosworth said in an interview with “Axios on HBO.” “I don’t feel comfortable at all saying they don’t have a voice because I don’t like what they said.” Bosworth has been leading Facebook’s hardware efforts, including those in virtual and augmented reality. Next year he will become CTO for Meta, Facebook’s parent company. Asked whether vaccine hesitancy would be the same with or without social media, Bosworth defended Facebook’s role in combatting COVID, noting that the company ran one of the largest information campaigns in the world to spread authoritative information.