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White House Blames Facebook, YouTube for Spreading Vaccine Misinformation

Facebook logo is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration photo taken March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Facebook logo is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration photo taken March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
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White House Blames Facebook, YouTube for Spreading Vaccine Misinformation

Facebook logo is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration photo taken March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Facebook logo is reflected in a drop on a syringe needle in this illustration photo taken March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

The White House has YouTube, not just Facebook, on its list of social media platforms officials say are responsible for an alarming spread of misinformation about COVID vaccines and are not doing enough to stop it, sources familiar with the administration's thinking said.

The criticism comes just a week after President Joe Biden called Facebook and other social media companies "killers" for failing to slow the spread of misinformation about vaccines. He has since softened his tone.

A senior administration official said one of the key problems is "inconsistent enforcement." YouTube - a unit of Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google - and Facebook get to decide what qualifies as misinformation on their platforms. But the results have left the White House unhappy, according to Reuters.

"Facebook and YouTube... are the judge, the jury and the executioner when it comes to what is going on in their platforms," an administration official said, describing their approach to COVID misinformation. "They get to grade their own homework."

Some of the main pieces of vaccine misinformation the Biden administration is fighting include that the COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, false claims that they carry microchips and that they hurt women's fertility, the official said.

Social media companies have come under fire recently from Biden, his press secretary, Jen Psaki, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who have all said the spread of lies about vaccines is making it harder to fight the pandemic and save lives.

A recent report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which has also been highlighted by the White House, showed 12 anti-vaccine accounts are spreading nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine misinformation online. Six of those accounts are still posting on YouTube.

"We would like to see more done by everybody" to limit the spread of inaccurate information from those accounts, the official said.

The fight against vaccine misinformation has become a top priority for the Biden administration at a time when the pace of vaccinations has slowed considerably despite the risk posed by the Delta variant, with people in many parts of the country hostile to being vaccinated.

The requests to Facebook and YouTube come after the White House reached out to Facebook, Twitter (TWTR.N) and Google in February about clamping down on COVID misinformation, seeking their help to stop it from going viral, another senior administration official said then.

"Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to vaccine misinformation... but Google has a lot to answer for and somehow manages to get away with it always because people forget they own YouTube," said Imran Ahmed, CCDH founder and chief executive.

YouTube spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said that since March 2020, the company has removed over 900,000 videos containing COVID-19 misinformation and terminated YouTube channels of people identified in the CCDH report. She said the company's policies are based on the content of the video, rather than the speaker.

"If any remaining channels mentioned in the report violate our policies, we will take action, including permanent terminations," she said.

On Monday, YouTube also said it will add more credible health information and as well as tabs for viewers to click on.

The senior administration official cited four issues on which the administration has asked Facebook to provide specific data, but the company has been reticent to comply.

These include how much vaccine misinformation exists on its platform, who is seeing the inaccurate claims, what the company is doing to reach out to them and how does Facebook know the steps it is taking are working.

The official said the answers Facebook has given are not "good enough."

Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said the company has removed over 18 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation since the start of the pandemic and that its own data shows that for people in the United States using the platform, vaccine hesitancy has declined by 50% since January and vaccine acceptance is high.

In a separate blog post last Saturday, Facebook called on the administration to stop "finger-pointing," laying out the steps it had taken to encourage users to get vaccinated.

But the administration official said the blog post did not have any metrics of success.

The Biden administration's broad concern is that the platforms are "either lying to us and hiding the ball, or they're not taking it seriously and there isn't a deep analysis of what's going on in their platforms," the official said.

"That calls any solutions they have into question."

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Technology

AI to Track Icebergs Adrift at Sea in Boon for Science

© Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
© Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
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AI to Track Icebergs Adrift at Sea in Boon for Science

© Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP
© Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

British scientists said Thursday that a world-first AI tool to catalogue and track icebergs as they break apart into smaller chunks could fill a "major blind spot" in predicting climate change.

Icebergs release enormous volumes of freshwater when they melt on the open water, affecting global climate patterns and altering ocean currents and ecosystems, reported AFP.

But scientists have long struggled to keep track of these floating behemoths once they break into thousands of smaller chunks, their fate and impact on the climate largely lost to the seas.

To fill in the gap, the British Antarctic Survey has developed an AI system that automatically identifies and names individual icebergs at birth and tracks their sometimes decades-long journey to a watery grave.

Using satellite images, the tool captures the distinct shape of icebergs as they break off -- or calve -- from glaciers and ice sheets on land.

As they disintegrate over time, the machine performs a giant puzzle problem, linking the smaller "child" fragments back to the "parent" and creating detailed family trees never before possible at this scale.

It represents a huge improvement on existing methods, where scientists pore over satellite images to visually identify and track only the largest icebergs one by one.

The AI system, which was tested using satellite observations over Greenland, provides "vital new information" for scientists and improves predictions about the future climate, said the British Antarctic Survey.

Knowing where these giant slabs of freshwater were melting into the ocean was especially crucial with ice loss expected to increase in a warming world, it added.

"What's exciting is that this finally gives us the observations we've been missing," Ben Evans, a machine learning expert at the British Antarctic Survey, said in a statement.

"We've gone from tracking a few famous icebergs to building full family trees. For the first time, we can see where each fragment came from, where it goes and why that matters for the climate."

This use of AI could also be adapted to aid safe passage for navigators through treacherous polar regions littered by icebergs.

Iceberg calving is a natural process. But scientists say the rate at which they were being lost from Antarctica is increasing, probably because of human-induced climate change.

 

Technology

AMD Predicts Weaker First-Quarter Sales, Shares Plunge on Nvidia Comparisons

An AMD logo and a computer motherboard appear in this illustration created on August 25, 2025. (Reuters)
An AMD logo and a computer motherboard appear in this illustration created on August 25, 2025. (Reuters)
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AMD Predicts Weaker First-Quarter Sales, Shares Plunge on Nvidia Comparisons

An AMD logo and a computer motherboard appear in this illustration created on August 25, 2025. (Reuters)
An AMD logo and a computer motherboard appear in this illustration created on August 25, 2025. (Reuters)

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday forecast a slight decline in quarterly revenue, raising concerns about whether it ​can effectively challenge Nvidia in the booming AI market and sending its shares tumbling 8% in after-hours trade.

The lackluster prediction comes despite an unexpected boost from sales of certain artificial intelligence chips to China, which began in the last quarter after the Trump administration approved a license for orders that AMD received in early 2025.

And without those sales to China which generated $390 million, AMD's data-center segment would have missed estimates for the fourth quarter.

AMD said it expects revenue of about $9.8 billion this quarter, plus or minus $300 million. That's down from $10.27 billion in the fourth-quarter which was up 34% year-on-year and ahead of LSEG ‌estimates for $9.67 billion.

PALES ‌NEXT TO NVIDIA

Though AMD is seen as one of the ‌few ⁠contenders ​that can seriously ‌challenge Nvidia, investors noted the stark contrast between the two companies' performances. AMD expects an adjusted gross margin of 55% this quarter. Nvidia has said it expects adjusted gross margin in the mid-70% range during its fiscal 2027.

"The expectations for large blowout quarters for AI-related hardware companies have skewed what the market is looking for," said Bob O'Donnell, president of TECHnalysis Research.

The forecast for the current first quarter includes $100 million from sales to China, where the situation remains "dynamic," AMD CEO Lisa Su said on a conference call with investors.

The US government ⁠has placed restrictions on the exports of advanced chips to China, but AMD received licenses to sell modified versions of its MI300 series ‌of AI chips there. Its MI308 chip competes with Nvidia's H20 ‍chip in China.

OPENAI SALES

AMD has accelerated its ‍product launches and is moving into selling full AI systems to better compete against Nvidia, which now ‍provides "rack-scale" systems that combine GPUs, CPUs and networking gear.

Last year, it entered into a multi-year deal to supply AI chips to ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, which would bring in tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and give the startup the option to buy up to roughly 10% of the chipmaker.

Su reiterated on Tuesday that the company ​expects sales of a new flagship AI server to OpenAI and others to rise rapidly in the second half of this year, saying a global memory-chip crunch will not ⁠slow its plans.

"I do not believe that we will be supply-limited in terms of the ramp that we put in place," Su said.

BEYOND OPENAI

As Big Tech and governments across the globe double down on investing in AI hardware, shares in Santa Clara, California-based AMD have doubled since the start of 2025, outperforming a 60% bump in the broader chip index.

But analysts remain concerned that AMD's success remains tied to a handful of customers that rivals such as Nvidia could try to poach. Reuters reported this week that Nvidia made a $20 billion move to hire most of chip startup Groq's founders after OpenAI held chip supply discussions with the startup.

"Growth appears concentrated in large deployments and specific regions, and China shipments are significant enough to influence a quarter," said eMarketer analyst Gadjo Sevilla.

Revenue in AMD's key data-center segment grew 39% to $5.38 billion in the ‌fourth quarter. But excluding sales of the MI308, which is a data-center chip, that revenue would have been $4.99 billion, below estimates of $5.07 billion.

Technology

Switch 2 Sales Boost Nintendo Results but Chip Shortage Looms

This photo taken on November 4, 2025 shows a woman taking photos of a Super Mario figure at the Nintendo Tokyo store in Tokyo. (AFP)
This photo taken on November 4, 2025 shows a woman taking photos of a Super Mario figure at the Nintendo Tokyo store in Tokyo. (AFP)
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Switch 2 Sales Boost Nintendo Results but Chip Shortage Looms

This photo taken on November 4, 2025 shows a woman taking photos of a Super Mario figure at the Nintendo Tokyo store in Tokyo. (AFP)
This photo taken on November 4, 2025 shows a woman taking photos of a Super Mario figure at the Nintendo Tokyo store in Tokyo. (AFP)

The runaway success of the Switch 2 console drove up Nintendo's net profit by more than 50 percent in the nine months to December, the Japanese video game giant said Tuesday.

But a global memory chip shortage, created by frenzied demand for artificial intelligence hardware, could push up manufacturing costs.

The Switch 2 became the world's fastest-selling games console after launching to a fan frenzy last summer.

It is the successor to the original Switch, which soared in popularity during the pandemic when games such as "Animal Crossing" struck a chord during long lockdowns.

Both are hybrid devices that can be connected to a TV or used on-the-go.

In April-December, net profit jumped 51.3 percent year-on-year to 358.9 billion yen ($2.3 billion), and revenue nearly doubled on-year to 1.9 trillion yen, Nintendo said.

But the firm kept its annual unit sales target for the Switch 2 steady at 19 million, and also held its full-year net profit forecast of 350 billion yen.

"Nintendo Switch 2 got off to a good start following its launch on June 5 and unit sales continued to grow through the holiday season," the company said.

Nearly 17.4 million Switch 2 devices were sold in the nine-month period, it added.

"Maintaining momentum is certainly a big focus for Nintendo," Krysta Yang of the Nintendo-focused Kit and Krysta Podcast told AFP.

A lack of heavy-hitting first-party new games for the Switch 2 in coming months risks hindering growth, although third-party titles such as "Resident Evil Requiem" should help fill the gap, she said.

Nintendo said Tuesday it planned to release "Mario Tennis Fever" this month and "Pokemon Pokopia" in March.

While the firm is diversifying into hit movies and theme parks, consoles remain the core of its business.

The Switch 1 has now sold 155.37 million units -- overtaking the Nintendo DS console to be its best-selling hardware of all time.

But soaring prices for memory chips, used in gaming consoles as well as phones, laptops and other electronics, will likely be a headwind for the company.

Their prices have been pushed up as chipmakers focus on producing the advanced memory chips in huge demand to power AI data centers.

"Nintendo and other console manufacturers are publicly keeping quiet about the impact of the shortage," gaming industry consultant Serkan Toto told AFP.

But "users can forget the past when consoles always became cheaper in tandem with component costs falling over time", with price hikes potentially on the way in 2026, he said.

Yang said she thought a price increase for the Switch 2 "is not out of the question" but added that Nintendo "would likely exhaust all other options" before doing so.