Associated Press
Have you liked or commented on a Facebook post about the COVID-19 pandemic?
Facebook is about to begin letting you know if you’ve spread bad information.
The company will soon be letting users know if they liked, reacted to, or commented on posts with harmful misinformation about the virus that was removed by moderators. It will also direct those who engaged with those posts to information about virus myths debunked by the World Health Organization.
Social media is awash in bad takes about the outbreak and platforms have begun to combat that misinformation.
Facebook said Thursday that people will begin seeing warning messages in coming weeks.
Facebook and other platforms have already taken steps to curb the wave of dangerous misinformation that has spread along with the coronavirus.
Facebook has banned bogus ads promising coronavirus treatments or cures. No such thing exists. There is no vaccine, though there is a global race to develop one.
The tech giant is altering its algorithms and, through an information page, attempting to put before users facts about the virus from global health organizations, as well as state and local health departments.
Conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus and the vaccines being developed to prevent it still pop up daily. Posts or videos that promote unverified treatments and cures have raked in thousands of a views.
Facebook users, for example, viewed a false claim that the virus is destroyed by chlorine dioxide nearly 200,000 times, estimates a new study out today from Avaaz, a left-leaning advocacy group that tracks and researches online misinformation.
The group found more than 100 pieces of misinformation about the coronavirus on Facebook, viewed millions of times even after the claims had been marked as false or misleading by fact checkers. Other false claims were not labeled as misinformation, despite being declared by fact-checkers as false. Facebook partners with news organizations around the world to provide fact checks of misleading content on its site. The Associated Press is part of that fact-checking program.
Fake information on social media has been deadly. Last month, Iranian media reported more than 300 people had died and 1,000 were sickened in the country after ingesting methanol, a toxic alcohol rumored to be a remedy on social media. An Arizona man also died after taking chloroquine phosphate — a product that some mistake for the anti-malaria drug chloroquine, which President Donald Trump and conservative pundits have touted as a treatment for COVID-19. Health officials have warned the drug hasn’t been proven safe or effective as a virus therapy.
One comment
Michael O'Rourke
April 18, 2020 at 1:48 pm
Amazing! Facebook, one of the leading corporate media First Amendment violators is being touted as a hero in the Coronavirus Crisis by, not surprisingly, the Associated Press. While Facebook uses the AP as its propaganda arm twisters opinions become fact. It would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous to our free speech liberties. We have already lost freedom of the press.
Just consider this statement in the article.
“Conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus … still pop up daily.”
So what does that really mean? It’s part of the “Communist China can do anything / America bad” one world corporate, media agenda. The opinion writers who “fact check” legitimate questions that arise when we as Americans question how this horrible virus ended up at our doors should actually do there job and look for facts, instead of stating their opinions as fact! These are basic principles of logic and formerly of journalism.
Another quote from the article:
“Facebook partners with news organizations around the world to provide fact checks of misleading content on its site. The Associated Press is part of that fact-checking program.”
This comment is not written by some social media troll who doesn’t understand that when it comes to treatments we must protect the patient and consumer. But that’s just a guise the Associated Press, USA Today, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and ABC use to sell their red-meat agenda to a growing uniformed public to prevent them from asking the right questions. And one of the right questions that should be asked at this time is “Where did this virus come from?
To answer that question it may actually take the courage of one member of that media organization to actually be a journalist. Stop assuming the “fact checkers” are stating facts instead of opinion and search for real answers. Maybe, the former prestige of your organization can rise from the partisan ashes to actually return to respected objective reporting standard.
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