What spreads faster than coronavirus? Fake news, that’s right. In this age of technology it’s simultaneously easy and hard to look for the source of the information that’s being shared nowadays.
But Facebook is now doing something to tackle this problem. Facebook will now have a new notification screen that will provide users more context to articles related to Covid-19. This attempt is to minimise the spread of fake news or misinformation that may be harmful to people. The new notification screen will show the source of the article and when it was first shared.
According to Facebook, the goal is to help people understand the source of the content before they share it and to direct people to our Covid-19 Information Center to ensure people have access to credible information about Covid-19 from global health authorities. It builds on the platform’s existing recency notifications, which it launched in June to help cut down on the spread of older links that routinely resurface in ways that can misrepresent current events.
This new notification screen is part of an ongoing series of measures that Facebook has been using since March to try to prevent its platform from becoming a conduit for dangerous conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation relating to coronavirus. The company began placing vetted coronavirus information from trusted health and medical authorities at the top of the News Feed at the onset of the pandemic, as well as the above mentioned information hub Covid-19.
But Facebook has yet to take more active action to fight the rapid spread of misinformation and fake news in the months since, including banning anti-mask groups and placing anti-misinformation messages in users’ news feeds that may have engaged in fake coronavirus stories. The “Plandemic” hoax video went viral in May, causing more headaches for moderation efforts on Facebook. Just last month, another video from Breitbart News, a trusted Facebook News partner, featuring false information about cures for coronavirus and measures to combat its spread, again became viral. Facebook later said it’d investigate why the video stayed live for such a long time.
As part of this new notification designed to help prevent the spread of old, outdated and purely false information, Facebook says it will exempt certain sources of information to ensure that trustworthy and helpful links are not caught on the screen.
“Along those lines, we want to ensure we don’t slow the spread of information from credible health authorities, so content posted by government health authorities and recognized global health organizations, like the World Health Organization, will not have this notification,” said Facebook.
