Facebook Removed Over 20 Million Posts With False Claims About COVID-19 Vaccines
Image via Mercigod / Shutterstock.com
Facebook revealed that the social media platform and its photo app, Instagram, took down more than 20 million posts with COVID-19 misinformation from the start of the pandemic to June this year.
While the social network is usually able to measure how prevalent other types of content—such as hate speech and nudity—are, it says compiling the information for pandemic misinformation is more complex.
The COVID-19 situation is “evolving even more quickly so it does make prevalence even more difficult to define and measure,” said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity.
This report follows one earlier this year by the White House that identified 12 people as responsible for 65% of the vaccine misinformation on social media. According to CNET, the individuals are all still active on Facebook, which the White House isn’t taking too kindly.
“In the middle 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 straightforward about how much misinformation is circulating – and being actively promoted – on their platform,” a White House spokesperson told CNN Business.
Many people, including US president Joe Biden, have criticized social media platforms for their failure to stop the spread of COVID-19 misinformation, especially misleading reports surrounding vaccines.
While Facebook has introduced measures such as fact-checkers and pushing false posts down the feed, there’s still doubt if what it’s done is enough to target the problem.
[via CNET, cover image via Mercigod / Shutterstock.com]
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