With the emergence of Covid-19, people started freaking out and many took it to social media to provide self-gathered information about the virus, it spreads, and the availability of resources in a certain region but social media is a vast world, and we cannot really say which information updated is true or not and therefore all social media companies made it their business to stop the spread of unverified information related to the Pandemic.
Therefore, Facebook on Thursday announced that it is focusing on removing misinformation about Covid-19 and false information about the vaccines from its applications as a part of user safety precautions surety. While the Facebook Product Policy Manager, Misinformation Alice Budisatrijo did say that it is not appropriate for a company to decide what is true and what is not because it can create potential overreach and power imbalance in the world, but it was necessary for Facebook to provide its users with credible information as it has a user following of more than 2 billion people from around the world and therefore it is important for them to remove any harmful content.
Alice explained that the Tech Giant is removing any information about the Covid-19 that can lead to potential harm and can come under the classification of false information. This could include information about the false cures, false treatments, false information about the availability of essential services, such as hospitals, hospital beds, or the location and severity of the outbreak. With the vaccine now going out in the world, it is also important for Facebook and other companies to stop any kind of false information going around and therefore any claims about the safety, efficacy, serious side effects, ingredients and conspiracy theories about the vaccines will also be removed in order to provide accurate information to the users only.
The company has also let it users know that since between March till October of 2020, the Tech Giant worked with a lot of third party fact checkers to remove any unverified misinformation on their app and succeeded in removing 12 million pieces of content carrying misinformation about the virus falling under the claims mentioned above. Apart from this, the application has managed to put warning labels on almost 167 million content on the app which can be claimed as false information and therefore the warning has stopped 95 percent of people from opening the said content and hence minimizing the spread of information.
The company does want it users to know that even with all the efforts of human reviewing as well as artificial intelligence, in no way can it make a 100 percent misinformation free environment and therefore it is necessary for the public to only believe direct information from authentic and reliable sources.
Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
Therefore, Facebook on Thursday announced that it is focusing on removing misinformation about Covid-19 and false information about the vaccines from its applications as a part of user safety precautions surety. While the Facebook Product Policy Manager, Misinformation Alice Budisatrijo did say that it is not appropriate for a company to decide what is true and what is not because it can create potential overreach and power imbalance in the world, but it was necessary for Facebook to provide its users with credible information as it has a user following of more than 2 billion people from around the world and therefore it is important for them to remove any harmful content.
Alice explained that the Tech Giant is removing any information about the Covid-19 that can lead to potential harm and can come under the classification of false information. This could include information about the false cures, false treatments, false information about the availability of essential services, such as hospitals, hospital beds, or the location and severity of the outbreak. With the vaccine now going out in the world, it is also important for Facebook and other companies to stop any kind of false information going around and therefore any claims about the safety, efficacy, serious side effects, ingredients and conspiracy theories about the vaccines will also be removed in order to provide accurate information to the users only.
The company has also let it users know that since between March till October of 2020, the Tech Giant worked with a lot of third party fact checkers to remove any unverified misinformation on their app and succeeded in removing 12 million pieces of content carrying misinformation about the virus falling under the claims mentioned above. Apart from this, the application has managed to put warning labels on almost 167 million content on the app which can be claimed as false information and therefore the warning has stopped 95 percent of people from opening the said content and hence minimizing the spread of information.
The company does want it users to know that even with all the efforts of human reviewing as well as artificial intelligence, in no way can it make a 100 percent misinformation free environment and therefore it is necessary for the public to only believe direct information from authentic and reliable sources.
Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images
