Social Media
Facebook to Soon Warn Users About Coronavirus-Related Misinformation
Facebook is soon going to let users know if they’ve spread coronavirus-related hoaxes. The social media and technology company will inform users if they’ve liked, reacted to, or commented on posts with harmful misinformation about the virus. More than this, it will direct users who interacted with those posts to information about myths that the World Health Organization has debunked.
“We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice-president of integrity.
Users will soon begin seeing warning messages. The company has already banned false ads about COVID-19 treatments or cures. As of now, there is still no vaccine to protect one from the virus.
According to Fox Business, Facebook is “altering its algorithms, and it is attempting to put facts about the virus from global health organizations to users through an information page and state and local health departments.”
Facebook Against Misinformation
Facebook to warn users who 'liked' coronavirus hoaxes https://t.co/yS7tzkE9zF pic.twitter.com/oXa65uYEnI
— CTV News (@CTVNews) April 16, 2020
Conspiracies about where the virus originated still appear on social media. Posts that encourage unverified treatments have also gathered thousands of views.
Avaaz, a left-leaning advocacy group, found more than 100 pieces of misinformation about the coronavirus on Facebook. These posts were viewed millions of times even after fact-checkers marked these claims as false.
“Coronavirus misinformation content mutates and spreads faster than Facebook’s current system can track it,” Avaaz said in the report.
“We’ve been calling on Facebook to take this step for three years now,” Fadi Quran, Avaaz’s campaign director, said. “It’s a courageous step by Facebook. At the same time, it’s not enough.”
Avaaz wants the notifications to be clearer about the misinformation that the user engaged with. “It wants the notification shown to any user who saw the misinformation in their news feed, regardless of whether they interacted with the post,” reported The Guardian.
“We think that correcting the record retroactively … will make people more resilient to misinformation in the future, and it will disincentivize malicious users,” said Quran.
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