Since the emergence of COVID-19, social networks have been flooded with false information about the disease. It is a very serious phenomenon that occurs throughout the world. For this reason, the main exponents of the sector have taken several measures to eradicate this problem. While they have done so with varying levels of success, they now seem genuinely committed to the cause. Facebook , for example, announced that has already removed 20 million posts that included false information about the Coronavirus. The statistics cover from the beginning of the pandemic, until last June.
The novelty was known during the presentation of a new report on compliance with community regulations on the platform. The deleted posts were not only from Facebook, but also from Instagram. Furthermore, in the same period of time more than 3,000 accounts, pages and groups were eliminated; This occurred due to repeated violations of the rules on disclosure of information about COVID-19 and vaccines.
This last number seems smaller, considering that Facebook currently has more than 2 billion active users worldwide. However, it goes hand in hand with previous reports indicating that the bulk of fake news about the pandemic comes from a small group of users.
The other notable fact is that Facebook has shown warnings in 190 million posts related to COVID-19, which were classified as false, partially false, altered or lacking context . In this case, the company relied on the work of third-party associates for fact-checking. “When they rate content this way, we add a prominent tag that warns people before they share it, and we show it lower in the feed of people,” they stated.
Late but safe: Facebook has pledged to remove false information about COVID-19
Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash It is clear that there is still a long way to go so that social networks can banish false news related to the Coronavirus. The truth is that, finally, Facebook seems to have made the commitment to get rid of the disinformation that circulates among its users.
Although Mark Zuckerberg and company announced their plan against fake news about COVID-19 in April 2020, it was only this year that they decided to permanently eliminate said content. This earned him strong criticism for his apparent passivity in the face of the enormous amount of erroneous data that was going viral. From then on, Facebook began to be more expeditious in taking action on this issue.
The problem is far from being solved, of course. However, these actions help purge the feed of the enormous amount of malicious content that exists on sensitive topics . And they are especially useful if you think of those who use Facebook – or social networks in general – as their main source of news.
