Biden’s Facebook Attack Followed Months of Frustration Inside White House

President Biden’s attack on Facebook followed months of mounting private frustration inside his administration over the social-media giant’s handling of vaccine misinformation, according to US officials, bringing into public view tensions that could complicate efforts to stop the spread of Covid-19. The false narratives that Covid-19 vaccines result in widespread death and that the U.S. government is mandating vaccines more than doubled across the major social-media platforms within the past three months, according to Zignal Labs Inc. Others include false claims that vaccines are really microchips and that vaccines change people’s DNA, the media-analytics firm said. Administration officials have suggested they have few concrete policy options for cracking down on the misinformation—aside from publicly pressuring social media firms. The administration’s confrontational approach marked a shift for Mr. Biden and his team, which began meeting with social-media companies during the presidential transition in a bid to strengthen protections against misinformation. But in recent months, the behind-the-scenes discussions with Facebook grew increasingly unproductive, according to the officials, who said they were unsatisfied with the company’s responses to their requests for more information about how it was responding to the influx in misinformation. Convinced that private negotiations had little hope of success, senior Biden administration officials decided to ratchet up public pressure on Facebook amid growing concern in the White House with the slowing pace of vaccinations and the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant.