Tech’s biggest companies are coming together through a meeting at the White House to discuss how to handle the COVID-19 outbreak, also known as coronavirus.
Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter will attend a meeting with U.S. chief technology officer Michael Kratsios on Wednesday, March 11, Politico initially reported.
The companies will either send a representative to go to the meeting in person in Washington, D.C., or participate through video teleconference since travel is inopportune right now. The meeting will reportedly address what ways the federal government can work closely with the tech industry to respond properly to the coronavirus outbreak that is spreading across the United States.
Digital Trends reached out to all of the companies set to attend Wednesday’s meeting for comment. We will update this story when we hear back from them.
In total, there have been more than 121,250 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and 4,369 confirmed deaths. The virus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, China, but there have been confirmed cases in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, and more countries around the globe. It has caused massive travel discrepancies, tech company closures, significant event cancellations, and more.
Online platforms have been working overtime to stop the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus since much of the news we get today is through social media platforms.
Apple and Google have taken down any coronavirus-related apps on their app stores unless created by a reputable organization. Facebook and YouTube are battling fake news being spread like deceptive coronavirus ads, conspiracy theory posts, and more and have ramped up their fact-checking efforts to flag posts that contain this kind of misinformation about the virus outbreak. Facebook and Twitter are also offering the World Health Organization (WHO) free ad credits to spread awareness.
The coronavirus outbreak has hit the tech industry especially hard. Major tech events like Google’s I/O Conference, Facebook’s F8 developer conference, and Mobile World Congress were all canceled due to the coronavirus.
Many of the big tech companies have closed offices or are advising their employees to work from home for the foreseeable future.
