Facebook revealed yesterday that it has removed more than a billion fake accounts to tackle misinformation, especially about Covid-19.
On Monday, a post on the Facebook Newsroom reported that about 1,3 billion fake Facebook accounts. The company employs over 35.000 people working to address misinformation on its platform.
Facebook says that since the beginning of the pandemic, it has used AI systems to detect hate speech and comments and has deleted posts that contain misinformation.
As a result, more than 12 million publications on COVID-19 and vaccines have been removed.
Facebook spokesman Guy Rosen writes that "misinformation can also be posted by people, even in good faith." Not everyone posts misinformation with malicious intent. They may want to help people, but they don't know that the information that they share are in fact untrue.
To deal with this challenge, Rosen writes that Facebook has built a global network of more than 80 independent information reviewers who review content in more than 60 languages.
"When they rate something as fake, we reduce its distribution so that fewer people see it and add a warning label with more information to anyone who sees it. (…) For the most serious types of misinformation, such as false allegations about COVID-19 and vaccines and content intended to suppress the vote, we remove the content.
In addition to removing misleading or false information, Facebook has also created some special websites for users to find reliable information from trusted experts. Examples include pages for COVID-19, climate and vote in the US in 2020. "
The first time Facebook took action against misinformation was in August 2020, when it removed 7 million posts with COVID-19 misinformation. This led to the termination of some Russian misinformation networks, as well as the demotion of positions containing false allegations about the 2020 US elections.
But Facebook is not the only social media platform to deal with the rise of fake news. Recently, Twitter began banning users who constantly post misinformation about COVID-19. Even TikTok removed more than 300.000 videos with misinformation about the US election.
Although the lines between misinformation and usage control are often blurred, Facebook and every platform has every right to make use of the terms you have agreed to when signing up. It is nothing more than a private enterprise with social effects. Any protest about lack of freedom is rather utopian since anyone who uses their platform social media has consented to these conditions. Otherwise he can set up a site and write whatever he wants.
From the reader's point of view, make sure that the information you receive daily comes from a reliable source or that you consider it a reliable source. Even better, we suggest you check the new stories you read before commenting on them.
