Senator Richard Blumenthal is urging Twitter and Facebook
to aggressively police their services for posts espousing anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories -- particularly ones that target pregnant women.
“I write with alarm about harassment on
Facebook and Instagram of expectant mothers and women that have suffered miscarriages by groups and accounts promoting conspiracy theories and disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine,” the
Democratic lawmaker from Connecticut said Thursday in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg.
“Facebook must be willing to meet its commitments to stop health misinformation with forceful and effective action, and I write to request information about what steps it has
taken to stop this horrific and destructive abuse,” the lawmaker added.
He sent a similar letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Blumenthal's letter was apparently sparked by a story in The Daily Beast, which reported this week that anti-vaxxers are harassing pregnant
women who post about getting the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as women who miscarried after publicly saying they were vaccinated and women who miscarried.
“Such disinformation is clearly
coordinated, often through private groups and public pages that scour social media for targets and anecdotes for feeding their campaign,” Blumenthal wrote.
He added that both companies
“have moved far too slow in responding to the targeted harassment and promotion of destructive conspiracy theories against women and people of color.”
Blumenthal is asking both
companies to answer a host of questions, including how they are enforcing policies against misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
He is also asking Dorsey to explain why Twitter only labels
COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, when Facebook's official policy calls for the removal of posts with false information about the vaccine.
The lawmaker has given the companies until February 28
to respond.