When the pandemic Covid-19 hit the world last year, a lot of misinformation related to the virus and its treatment circulated the internet such as many people spread on the internet that some infection killers could work as a COVID treatment and all social media companies tried to stop such unauthentic information that was not approved or identified by the World Health Organization.
Same was the case when the vaccine for the Covid-19 rolled out a few months ago. Many people started discouraging people from getting the vaccine by promoting misinformation regarding all the side effects it held and such misinformation would only cause a decline in fighting the pandemic as people will be hesitant to get themselves vaccinated. Social Media companies realized that and therefore did what they could to promote and encourage people to get vaccinated. Facebook encouraged people to get vaccinated by providing them with the true and authentic information regarding the vaccine and also launched new frames for people to put on their display pictures to let their friends know they got vaccinated and they should as well. According to the company seeing your loved ones taking the vaccination will encourage others as well.
While these two were something the company fought against there is this third thing as well that it is currently trying to fight. Since the pandemic has emerged people have tried to give out self-medication tips on their own claiming that it could cure the virus or not even let it touch you and while we do know some people do it out of care for their loved ones, this is a worldwide pandemic and should not be taken so lightly and therefore only the most authentic and true information regarding treatments should be used.
Therefore, in order to stop this treatment misinformation from circulating their platform Facebook is rolling out a new COVID-19 labels about treatments without scientific proof similar to the COVID-19 information like it did previously.
When any user will post or share any kind of medication which has not been approved by the World Health Organization claiming it will treat the virus Facebook will show a label under it reading “Some unapproved COVID-19 treatments can cause serious harm” which will let the viewers know that this is unauthentic information and should not be followed. For the initial weeks these labels will appear in a few languages like English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Arabic and will be linked to the Facebook Covid19 Misinformation Centre. The same pattern will be followed on Instagram as well.
The tech giant is working with fact checking agencies in order to minimize the spread of fake information on their platforms and every time a post is marked as fake news, they’re labeled on Facebook and Instagram and stop being seen by other users.
This is a great initiative and work that social media companies are doing. At such crucial times when the health and safety of people are at risk it is beneficial for people to be linked up with only the most authentic information.
Read next: The European Union is carrying out an investigation on Facebook related to the massive leak that occurred earlier in April of 2021
Same was the case when the vaccine for the Covid-19 rolled out a few months ago. Many people started discouraging people from getting the vaccine by promoting misinformation regarding all the side effects it held and such misinformation would only cause a decline in fighting the pandemic as people will be hesitant to get themselves vaccinated. Social Media companies realized that and therefore did what they could to promote and encourage people to get vaccinated. Facebook encouraged people to get vaccinated by providing them with the true and authentic information regarding the vaccine and also launched new frames for people to put on their display pictures to let their friends know they got vaccinated and they should as well. According to the company seeing your loved ones taking the vaccination will encourage others as well.
While these two were something the company fought against there is this third thing as well that it is currently trying to fight. Since the pandemic has emerged people have tried to give out self-medication tips on their own claiming that it could cure the virus or not even let it touch you and while we do know some people do it out of care for their loved ones, this is a worldwide pandemic and should not be taken so lightly and therefore only the most authentic and true information regarding treatments should be used.
Therefore, in order to stop this treatment misinformation from circulating their platform Facebook is rolling out a new COVID-19 labels about treatments without scientific proof similar to the COVID-19 information like it did previously.
When any user will post or share any kind of medication which has not been approved by the World Health Organization claiming it will treat the virus Facebook will show a label under it reading “Some unapproved COVID-19 treatments can cause serious harm” which will let the viewers know that this is unauthentic information and should not be followed. For the initial weeks these labels will appear in a few languages like English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Arabic and will be linked to the Facebook Covid19 Misinformation Centre. The same pattern will be followed on Instagram as well.
The tech giant is working with fact checking agencies in order to minimize the spread of fake information on their platforms and every time a post is marked as fake news, they’re labeled on Facebook and Instagram and stop being seen by other users.
This is a great initiative and work that social media companies are doing. At such crucial times when the health and safety of people are at risk it is beneficial for people to be linked up with only the most authentic information.
Read next: The European Union is carrying out an investigation on Facebook related to the massive leak that occurred earlier in April of 2021
