When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a National Football League game in January, dozens of Twitter trolls quickly blamed it on COVID-19 shots.
“Snake-oil salesmen” seized on the event, said Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf in an interview. The #diedsuddenly hashtag, which appeared in tweets about the incident, is often used to discredit vaccines by linking them to deaths and injuries without evidence.
The FDA is treading a fine line between responding to misinformation on social media without amplifying it. After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter Inc. last year, the platform stopped enforcing a policy designed to suppress false or misleading information about the pandemic.
