Facebook to notify people on harmful misinformation related to coronavirus COVID-19, connect them with accurate information

In a step to curb harmful misinformation on coronavirus COVID-19, Facebook on Thursday asserted that it will soon begin showing messages in News Feed to people who previously engaged with harmful misinformation, that we’ve since removed, and connect them with accurate information.

In a Facebook post CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post wrote that Facebook will launch a new feature, Get The Facts, debunking misinformation about the coronavirus. This will be part of a section of the company's COVID-19 Information Centre featuring articles written by independent fact-checking partners debunking misinformation about the coronavirus. 

"We're also launching a new feature called Get The Facts, a section of our COVID-19 Information Center featuring articles written by independent fact-checking partners debunking misinformation about the coronavirus. We will also soon begin showing messages in News Feed to people who previously engaged with harmful misinformation related to COVID-19 that we’ve since removed, connecting them with accurate information," he wrote.

He added, "On Facebook and Instagram, we've now directed more than 2 billion people to authoritative health resources via our COVID-19 Information Center and educational pop-ups, with more than 350 million people clicking through to learn more. We're also continuing our efforts to reduce misinformation. Since the beginning of March, we've expanded our fact-checking coverage to more than a dozen new countries and now work with over 60 fact-checking organizations that review content in more than 50 languages."

Zuckerberg explained that if a piece of content contains harmful misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm, then Facebook will take it down. "We've taken down hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation related to COVID-19, including theories like drinking bleach cures the virus or that physical distancing is ineffective at preventing the disease from spreading."

"For other misinformation, once it is rated false by fact-checkers, we reduce its distribution, apply warning labels with more context and find duplicates. In March, we displayed warnings on about 40 million posts related to Covid-19 based on 4,000 articles reviewed by independent fact-checkers. When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content," he further added.