Facebook continues to try to stop the misinformation that is poured onto the platform about Covid 19 and the effects of vaccines .
The social network that, it claims, has eliminated more than 3,000 accounts, pages and groups since the beginning of the pandemic for repeatedly violating its rules against the spread of hoaxes about the health crisis, has made a statement in which it denies, bluntly, that the majority of misinformation in this regard – 73% – is being shared by a small group of 12 people; as stated in a report prepared by the Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH ).
“The report on which the flawed narrative is based looked at just a small set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from just 30 groups, some of which have only 2,500 users. They are by no means representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about Covid 19 vaccines in recent months on Facebook, ”says Monika Bickert, vice president of content policy for the social network.
In turn, Facebook assures that it has already taken measures against the disseminators of hoaxes mentioned in the CCDH report . “We have removed more than three dozen Facebook or Instagram pages, groups and accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of them for violating our policies. We have also imposed sanctions on almost two dozen additional pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, ”says Bickert.
The vice president of the platform adds that, according to her figures, the users mentioned in the study are only responsible for 0.05% of all views of content related to vaccines on Facebook.
Since the start of the pandemic, the social network claims that it has removed more than 20 million content for violating its regulations on disinformation regarding vaccines . Bickert’s statement comes just a few weeks after the United States government took advantage of the CCDH report to accuse the platform of inaction, as shared by ‘ CNN ‘.
In its new report on compliance with community regulations -corresponding to the second quarter of 2021-, Facebook, in turn, highlights that, to date, it has labeled more than 190 million publications related to the pandemic for containing false information, according to with company verifiers.
