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(CNN) -
Facebook announced on Wednesday that it had taken action against the so-called '12 of disinformation', a month after the White House singled out the twelve people and argued that they were responsible for most of the disinformation about the coronavirus. .
In making the announcement, Monika Bickert, Facebook's vice president of content policy, rejected the narrative that the twelve accounts were primarily responsible for the spread of misinformation about vaccines.
And he wrote that focusing on them "is seeing the trees and not the forest."
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But, Bickert said, "Any amount of misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine that violates our policies is too much for our standards. And we have removed more than three dozen pages, groups, and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people. Including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies. "
Bickert added that Facebook "also imposed sanctions on almost two dozen additional pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people" and "applied sanctions to some of their website domains."
The complaint against disinformation
The '12 of disinformation' were initially identified in March by the Center for the Fight Against Digital Hate, a non-profit organization, which asked Facebook to close the pages operated by those people.
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The White House took advantage of that report, criticizing the network in July for allowing the people identified in the report to remain on its platform.
"There are about 12 people who are producing 65% of the misinformation against vaccines on social media platforms," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.
This Wednesday, after Facebook's action against the '12 of disinformation', a White House spokesman continued to harshly criticize the company.
"In the midst of a pandemic, being honest and transparent about the work that needs to be done to protect public health is absolutely vital. But Facebook still refuses to be direct about how much misinformation is being circulated and actively promoted on its platform," he said a White House spokesperson told CNN Business.
"It is up to everyone to get this right so that we can make sure the American people get accurate information to protect their health and that of their loved ones. Which is why the administration will continue to put pressure on leaders, the media, and major sources. information providers like Facebook to meet those basic expectations, "the spokesperson added.
What did Facebook say and what did it do about it?
Facebook said in July that it had cracked down on pages associated with the '12 of disinformation.'
But the company would not offer more specificity at that time.
Facebook has not yet removed all accounts linked to the group.
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Bickert said Wednesday that "the remaining accounts associated with these people do not post content that violates our rules. They have only posted a small amount of the offending content, which we have removed or are simply inactive."
One of those pages that were not removed belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine figure, who was previously banned from Facebook-owned Instagram, but not Facebook.
At the time, a Facebook spokesperson told CNN: "We don't automatically disable accounts in our apps. Because accounts can post about different things on our different services."
Facebook misinformation