As the coronavirus pandemic progressed, we have also witnessed how misinformation and hoaxes did it in most social networks, highlighting Facebook or Twitter as some of the main ones (because they are the most used by the majority of users who share this type of false and non-verified content).
In fact, since March last year, just before the pandemic “broke out” in our country, some European media were wondering how users should deal with false news about COVID-19. And although many important companies, such as Google (with its search engine and YouTube), have dealt with the matter, there is still much to do.
As we have recently learned, Facebook has reported that it will penalize users who repeatedly share misinformation . This was announced a few days ago through a note published on its official website, in addition to taking other measures such as the introduction of new labels that will serve as a warning, with which it intends to notify those users who repeatedly share false claims.
Among other things, continually sharing false claims could result in ” your posts moving lower in the news feed, making them less likely to be seen by other people .” It would be, so to speak, penalizing users who share false information, knowing that this information is not true.
Until now, the company’s policy has been to downgrade individual posts discredited by fact-checkers. But, in most cases, these types of posts ended up going viral long before they could be reviewed by verifiers. With this change, Facebook says it will warn users about the consequences of repeatedly sharing erroneous and false information .
With this idea, Facebook will alert people who are constantly sharing misinformation with notifications that their posts might be less visible on the front page as a result. In turn, the notifications will be linked to the fact-checking of the publication in question, and users will have the ability to delete it .
However, the company has not reported how many false publications would be necessary to activate the penalty , although it would be a system that would act automatically.
Measurements do not stop here
On the other hand, the social network has also indicated that it will take measures against those pages that constantly publish false information and hoaxes. And it is that those who repeat offenders will see how Facebook will add a pop-up warning when new users try to follow them .
The update comes after the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic into our lives, in a year marked by Facebook’s fight to control and prevent viral misinformation about the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines and even the North American presidential elections.
And, as the company writes in a post on its official blog, “whether it be false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, we make sure that fewer people see information erroneous in our publications ”.
In any case, and as we learned recently, it is common that, often, it is the same people who are behind the creation of more viral hoaxes and false claims. And a good example is found in a recent report, which warned that most of the misinformation against vaccines was related to only 12 people.
