Biden Will Not Screen Private Texts for Vaccine Misinformation
The Claim
The Biden administration plans to monitor the private texts of U.S. citizens for misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
News posted on
Emerging story
An article first published by Politico reported that the Biden administration will work with text messaging carriers to combat vaccine misinformation. In the last few days, conservative outlets, including Fox News, exaggerated the weight of the reported information, claiming the Biden administration plans “to monitor vaccine misinformation in text messages.” Social media users then picked up on the claim and spread it among at least hundreds of posts. The real number of social media users who’ve at least read the misinformation might be substantially higher.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar did not find any evidence that the Biden administration plans to monitor private texts for COVID-19 misinformation.
Conservative outlets such as Fox News and the Blaze mischaracterized information originally published in a Politico article that was partially about the Democratic National Committee’s attempts to dispel COVID-19 misinformation. These outlets falsely said the Biden administration was involved in screening texts from US citizens to track COVID-19 misinformation.
After the claim circulated, Natasha Korecki, one of the article reporters, tried to quash it in a tweet on July 12.
“As the story points out, it's allied, private groups that are working with SMS carriers – not the White House. Even then, there is no ability for groups to read individual texts aside from the ones they receive themselves,” Korecki wrote in response to a Twitter user who called the government potentially reading text messages “pretty damn scary.”
The Fox News story, shared and amplified by a sitting US rep, mischaracterized that information and claimed the Biden administration itself is planning to monitor the private text messages of US citizens to identify COVID-19 misinformation. There are no such plans to do so, and the Biden administration is not involved.
Generally, political campaigns and organizers use mass SMS to communicate information quickly to text message subscribers. Government entities and political leaders using these mass SMS services are forbidden from sending false information through them.
The Democratic National Committee will only notify the mass SMS services it’s connected to when it detects fraudulent mass texts. A DNC spokesperson told the Associated Press it has “no ability to access or read people’s private text messages” and it is “not working with any government agency (including the White House) to try to see personal text messages.
