Critics Slam Biden’s Plan to Monitor Americans’ Text Messages to “Dispel Misinformation About Vaccines”

A recent report revealed the Biden administration has plans to work with tech companies and SMS carriers to monitor and combat misinformation, which was immediately met with skepticism and criticism by Republican lawmakers

On Monday, Politico reported plans from the Biden administration to battle misinformation in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine.

"The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go ‘door-to-door’ to increase vaccination rates," Politico wrote. "The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics."

The article continues how pro-Biden groups and the Democratic National Committee will work with SMS carriers to "dispel misinformation" in peoples' private text messages.

"Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages," Politico reports.

"NEW: Bidenworld is taking a more aggressive approach to combat vaccine fear-mongering by conservative forces. That includes– Calling on SMS carriers to mete out false messages – urging social media platforms to fact-check w/@EugeneDaniels2," Politico reporter Natasha Korecki wrote.

The Biden administration is casting conservative opponents of its Covid-19 vaccine campaign as dangerous and extreme, adopting a more aggressive political posture in an attempt to maneuver through the public health conundrum.

The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.

“The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whomever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you've got to do something that you don't want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview on Sunday. “That's absolutely not the case, it's trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that's where I think the disconnect is.”

Fauci took some of that messaging to Sunday cable news shows, including underscoring the idea that door-to-door vaccination efforts are an attempt to remove barriers to access and that 99.5 percent of deaths due to Covid are among people who are unvaccinated.

“Those data kind of hits you right between the eyes,” Fauci said of the fatalities.

Beyond Fauci, press secretary Jen Psaki has pushed back on Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a lawmaker she once said she’d not mention from the podium — who compared the administration’s vaccine campaign to Nazis. Jeff Zients, the White House’s Covid response director, rebuked Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who contended falsely in a tweet that government “agents” were going door-to-door to “compel vaccination.”

Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.

“We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country's public health and will not shy away from calling that out.”

The pushback is a change of tone and approach from earlier this year, when the White House often chose to ignore its most vocal conservative critics out of a desire not to elevate them. It is a tacit acknowledgment that the July 4 goal of 70 percent vaccination nationwide was overly optimistic, if not naive. And it underscores that two realities are setting in: It’s becoming more difficult to convince vaccine-skeptics to get their shots (of the 10 least vaccinated states, all were won by Donald Trump in 2020) and the anti-vaccine voices, already vocal in the country, are becoming more mainstreamed by Republicans eager to oppose Biden-led initiatives.

Indeed, over the past few weeks, criticism of the administration’s door-to-door vaccination strategy has increasingly become a fixture on Fox News, in addition to being a top topic on conservative social media posts and over SMS messages to cell phone users. It’s coming at a time when the highly contagious Delta variant is triggering a rise in hospitalizations and infections among those who have not been vaccinated. Those who are door knocking are individuals like pastors or grassroots organizers, not government bureaucrats. And they are not delivering vaccines, but spreading the word on where and how to get vaccinated, and why it’s important to do so. To the degree that people understand that, the White House reasons, it could have a positive impact on increasing vaccinations.