White House officials pressed Facebook for special access to tools to target vaccine-hesitant users and berated Facebook employees for not sharing enough data, contradicting White House claims at the time.
According to internal company communications viewed by Fox Business, the White House asked Facebook if they could provide government agencies with special access to tools to target users.
“Since it’s a global pandemic, can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they normally wouldn’t be able to?” President Biden’s digital director Rob Flaherty asked.
The idea came up in a conversation about how to convince people worried about side effects around the COVID vaccine to take it.
On an April 5th call, a Facebook employee mentioned how if someone was worried about nose bleeds as a side effect of the vaccine, in an ideal world, they would direct them to information addressing that concern. Flaherty asked the Facebook team “are you able to provide resources?”
Another Facebook employee replied doing something like showing them a targeted resource addressing their concern might trigger people. The Facebook employee saying they “have to be careful in how we approach”.
Flaherty asked, “If people are having the conversation, is the presumption that we let people have it. Direct them to CDC. What then?”
A Facebook employee replied, “We all know people that have had the experience that think that FB is listening to them.”
The Facebook employee told Flaherty that something like an immediate generated message about nose bleeds might give users “the Big Brother feel” but suggested they show the content on a delay to avoid setting off alarm bells among users.
“We should pay attention to those conversations, make sure that people see information, even if it’s not right then,” the Facebook employee said.
During the April 5th call, Biden’s head of strategic communications and public engagement for the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Courtney Rowe appeared to mock middle America’s ability to determine what is true and what isn’t.
