Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has called for Facebook to be broken up, claiming that social media companies have hindered the global response to COVID by allowing "disinformation" to remain on their platforms.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez discussed the impact social media platforms have had on the global fight against COVID-19, taking aim at Facebook in particular.
AOC claimed that by failing to adequately quell the spread of "disinformation," social media companies have "sabotaged" efforts to deal with the pandemic.
AOC accused Facebook of having "exercised an abuse ... in civil society writ large," calling their actions "completely corrosive."
"There are some things that the United States provides that are welcome," she said. "There are also things that we want the United States to stop exporting, and one of those things is disinformation — disinformation through U.S.-founded companies like Facebook that have absolutely slowed and frankly sabotaged the global effort to fight against the coronavirus."
AOC went on to suggest that beyond impacting responses to COVID-19, Facebook has accelerated social violence, and possibly even "what some would call genocidal activities" in certain places around the world.
When asked what could be done to remedy the situation, AOC suggested that Facebook's parent company, Meta, be broken up. "We should pursue anti-trust activity on Facebook," she said. "They are acting as an advertiser; they are acting as both platform and vendor; they are a communications platform that has historically been an established domain of anti-trust."
"Because they are so many businesses and industries in one," AOC concluded, "the case is, I believe, right there in and of itself as to why they should be subject to anti-trust activity."
AOC's comments come amid a growing effort to censor information or ideas about COVID that buck the government narrative on social media and beyond. A month before people began calling on Spotify to censor Joe Rogan's podcast, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was permanently banned from Twitter over her comments on the virus. Facebook subsequently suspended her for 24 hours.
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