"Despite some concrete and positive steps
previously taken, these companies owe both the public and the Congress
additional answers about the exponential and dangerous proliferation of
misinformation," Schiff, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence
Committee, said in a statement after sending letters to the companies.
US technology companies have come under fire
from the Biden administration and other critics for the alarming spread of
vaccine misinformation that they say is slowing inoculation in the country and
increasing hostility to vaccines.
Other companies, including Twitter and
Alphabet's Google and YouTube, have also faced criticism for allowing false
information on COVID-19, including vaccines, to proliferate.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company is
"constantly evaluating the books we list to ensure they comply with our
content guidelines, and as an additional service to customers, at the top of
relevant search results pages we link to the CDC advice on COVID and protection
measures."
Facebook said in a statement that since the
start of the pandemic it had "removed over 20 million pieces of COVID
misinformation, labeled more than 190 million pieces of COVID content rated by
our fact-checking partners, and connected over 2 billion people with reliable
information through tools like our COVID information centre."
The company added it had "removed over
3,000 accounts, pages, and groups for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 and
vaccine misinformation policies and will continue to enforce our policies and
offer tools and reminders for people who use our platform to get
vaccinated."
Facebook said last month it had removed dozens
of vaccine misinformation "superspreaders."
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