The effects of the investigation weaken the company’s claims that it takes strong action against misinformation
Last game change August 20, 2020 18.08 BST
Websites that disseminate incorrect fitness information attracted nearly a billion perspectives on Facebook in April alone, when the coronavirus pandemic intensified worldwide, according to one report.
Facebook had promised to take strong action against conspiracy theories and erroneous data at the beginning of the pandemic, but as its leaders have promised to be held accountable, its set of rules seems to have driven traffic to a network of sites that share false and harmful news, the greedy cross-based organization found.
False medical data can be fatal; Researchers led through the Bangladesh International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, who wrote in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, say a singles misdata on coronaviruses has caused up to 800 deaths.
The pages of the 10 most sensitive sites that sell erroneous data and fitness conspiracy theories have gained nearly 4 times more perspectives on Facebook than the 10 most reliable fitness data sites, Avaaz warned in a report.
The report went to Facebook pages and shared a lot of false claims related to coronavirus.The pages and sites covered a variety of other origins, adding election medicine, biological agriculture, far-right politics and widespread conspiracies.
He revealed that global networks of 82 sites that transmit incorrect fitness information in at least five countries had generated around 3.8 billion perspectives on Facebook in the past year, peaking in April, with 460 million prospects in a month without getting married.
“This suggests that just as citizens needed more credible fitness data, and while Facebook was proactively looking to raise the profile of authorized fitness services on the platform, its set of rules potentially compromised those efforts,” the report says.
A small but influential network is guilty of generating massive amounts of traffic to fitness misinformation sites. Avaaz discovered 42 “super station” sites with 28 million subscribers generating around 800 million views.
Only one article, falsely stating that Doctors and Hospitals of the American Medical Association overestimated deaths from Covid-19, has been seen 160 million times.
This broad collective success suggests that Facebook’s own internal systems cannot prevent users from receiving misinformation about fitness, even at a critical time when the company has promised to keep users “safe and informed.”
“Avaaz’s most recent studies are another conviction of Facebook’s ability to magnify false or misleading physical fitness data on the pandemic,” said British MP Damian Collins, who conducted a parliamentary investigation into erroneous data.
“Most of this harmful content is still on Facebook without any caution or context…It’s time for [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg to act.You want to leave your platform blank and avoid this destructive infodemic.
According to an article at the time, published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the potential damage to incorrect fitness information is extensive.By analyzing media and social media in 87 countries, users learned more than 2,000 widely circulated coronavirus claims, of which more than 1,800 were shown to be false.
Some of the false accusations were directly harmful: one, which suggested that natural alcohol could kill the virus, was linked to 800 deaths, as well as 60 other people who went blind after drinking methanol as a remedy’.In India, 12 other people, adding five children, fell ill after drinking alcohol made from poisonous Datura seeds (a ummetta plant in the local language) to cure coronavirus disease,’ the newspaper said.COVID-19.”
Beyond harmful lies in particular, much of the incorrect information is simply useless, but it can contribute to the spread of coronavirus, as is the case with a South Korean church that has come to that saltwater spraying can simply fight the virus.
“They put the spray nozzle in the mouth of a follower who then showed himself as a patient before doing the same with other fans as well, without disinfecting the sprinkler,” an official later said.More than a hundred subscribers were infected.
“National and foreign agencies, which add fact-checking agencies, not only identify and demystify rumors and conspiracy theories, but also interact with social media corporations to disseminate correct information,” the researchers conclude.
One of Facebook’s methods of combating incorrect information on the platform has been to give independent auditors the ability to put precautionary labels on parts they consider false.
Zuckerberg said fake news would be marginalized through the algorithm, which determines the content the audience sees.”Publications considered false degrade and lose on average 80% of their long-term visits,” he wrote in 2018.
But Avaaz found that massive amounts of incorrect information were being leaked into Facebook’s verification system, reported through fact-checking organizations.
They analyzed nearly two hundred erroneous fitness data that was shared on the site after being known as problematic.Less than one in five people wore a precautionary label, and the vast majority, 84%, escaped after being translated into other languages or republished.in whole or in part.
“These effects involve a hole in Facebook’s ability to stumble upon clones and diversifications in verified content, that is, in languages, and apply precautionary tags to them,” the report says.
There are two undeniable steps that can particularly reduce the scope of erroneous data.The first would be to proactively classify the wrong data that was noticed before it was called false, adding vital correct comments to users’ feeds.
Recent studies have shown that such corrections can halve confidence in an incorrect report, Avaaz said.The other step would be the detection and tracking of translated and cloned material, so that Zuckerberg’s promise to starve his audience sites is in fact fulfilled.
A Facebook spokesperson said: “We share Avaaz’s purpose of restricting misinformation, but its findings do not reflect the steps we have taken to prevent it from spreading to our services.Through our global network of fact-checkers, from April to June, he implemented precautionary labels to 98 million misconceptions about Covid-19 and removed 7 pieces of content that can cause imminent damage.We have directed more than 2 billion others to the resources of the fitness government and when it tries a percentage link in Covid-19, we show them a pop-up window to attach them with reliable aptitude information.”
This article was amended on August 20, 2020 because researchers led through the Bangladesh International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research advised a link between incorrect singles information about coronavirus and 800 deaths, but did not directly link incorrect information to deaths, as noted in the past..