Facebook is sending myth-busting messages to users who have interacted with posts containing ‘harmful misinformation’ about coronavirus.
The social network said messages will start appearing in the news feeds of any users who have interacted with a post that has since been removed by the company because of its contents.
This includes people who have liked, reacted, commented or clicked on the harmful content, such as false claims that 5G is linked to the health pandemic.
Facebook said its messages will connect people with advice from the World Health Organisation‘s ‘mythbusters’ page, which debunks false claims about COVID-19.
Facebook users who have interacted with misleading posts will start seeing these messages in the coming weeks.
Facebook users who have interacted with fake news about the coronavirus will see a message in their news feed urging them to visit the WHO website and share a WHO link
The tech giant said the aim is to try to stop the spread of misinformation both within and outside of its own platform.
‘We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook,’ the company’s vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said.
However, civil liberties groups have expressed concerns about the growing online control and censorship in the name of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an open letter to Facebook, Big Brother Watch said vital information could be wrongly suppressed and harm public health efforts during the crisis.
‘Trust is incredibly important and it is a dangerous time to hastily re-write rules without considering the consequences,’ it said in the joint letter, also signed by Index on Censorship, Open Rights Group and Adam Smith Institute.
The organisations, which have also addressed their letter to WhatsApp, YouTube and the UK government, express concern about government pressure to remove lawful content and social media censorship through measures that are ‘not proportional or time limited’.
A spokesperson from Big Brother Watch also told MailOnline that Facebook’s new censorship update is representative of a ‘kneejerk’ reaction from social media companies in this area.
‘A lot of the things that are being done are going to end up lasting long beyond [the coronavirus pandemic] so we’re urging caution and open a bit more of a measured conversation,’ she said.
COVID-19 Information Centre appears at the top of users’ Feeds with authoritative information from organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the NHS
Also announced by Facebook is a new program called ‘Get the Facts’ as a section of its COVID-19 Information Centre – a dedicated section of the social network for news and reputable sources about the pandemic.
This ‘Get the Facts’ section, which is only being released in the US for now, features articles written by independent fact-checking partners that debunk misinformation about the coronavirus.
Facebook’s fact checking partners – including Reuters and Full Fact in the UK – have already been working to reduce the spread of fake news as part of a feature called ‘fact check overlay’.
Offending content posted by friends on the site just appears in the news feed as a blank grey box after it has been deemed dangerous by Facebook, which users can still choose to view.
Facebook said that in March alone, it displayed warnings on about 40 million posts related to COVID-19 based on 4,000 articles reviewed by independent fact-checkers.
When Facebook users saw the warning labels, 95 per cent of the time they did not go on to view the original content.
Once information on the site is rated false by independent fact-checkers, the network reduces its distribution, applies warning labels with more context and finds duplicates.
After being checked by independent fact checkers and deemed false, content such as photos initially appear as a blanked-out square
Facebook said it has already removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of COVID-19 related misinformation that could lead to ‘imminent physical harm’ – examples of which include dangerous claims like ‘drinking bleach cures the virus’.
It is now also removing claims that physical distancing doesn’t help prevent the spread of coronavirus and false claims that 5G technology causes the symptoms or contraction of COVID-19.
The social network’s new update follows news that more 5G phone masts were vandalised by conspiracy theorists over the Easter weekend, including some providing internet to the NHS’s temporary Nightingale hospital in Birmingham.
Facebook said it has directed more than two billion people to resources from WHO and other health authorities through its COVID-19 Information Centre and pop ups on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that since the start of March, it has also expanded fact-checking coverage to more than a dozen new countries.
The social network works work with over 60 fact-checking organisations that review content in more than 50 languages, he said.