Mark Zuckerberg
Mark ZuckerbergReuters

During a livestreamed interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday of this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he is interested in collaborating with the incoming Biden administration on its Covid-19 response, Business Insider reports.

“Our team at Facebook has already reached out to the incoming administration to help with the COVID response in any way that we can,” Zuckerberg said. “I’m sure there will be a few important things that we can do together.”

While Zuckerberg chose not to elaborate on exactly what he had in mind, company sources have suggested that Facebook may decide to place a banner at the top of its site, encouraging people to be vaccinated against coronavirus. All the CEO himself would say was that Facebook was “already planning a push around authoritative information on vaccines,” such as was seen last month, when it began promoting a tool linking users to information on the flu vaccine.

Senior members of Biden’s team have indicated their impatience and displeasure with Facebook on its policy of allowing dissemination of “misinformation” on many occasions. A few weeks ago, Bill Russo, a deputy communications director on Biden’s campaign press team, accused Facebook of “shredding the fabric of our democracy,” and of spreading “disinformation” both before and after the election. Earlier this year, Biden himself, in an interview with the New York Times, expressed similar sentiments, saying that certain legal protections for social media platforms regarding the content they post “should be revoked, because [Facebook] is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false.”

While Facebook continues to allow posting of material deemed “anti-vaccination,” it announced several weeks ago that it would be making “anti-vaxxer” content harder to find in its search results. Advertisements overtly discouraging people from being vaccinated are to be banned.