Always more labels and warnings: Facebook, which is increasing efforts to fight against disinformation, plans to post context and links for all posts that mention the Covid-19. When its users publish or share articles on the pandemic, the dominant social network may soon add information on the source of the content as well as links to its own information center on the disease.
“By providing more context, our goal is to make it easier for people to identify content that is recent, reliable and most valuable to them,” said the platform in a statement released on Thursday. Facebook will now display a notification if media content older than 90 days is shared. “This article dates from more than 3 months ago”, will warn the network in case of sharing, still leaving the choice to share it anyway. “News organizations have told us about their concerns about old stories shared on social media as if they were news, which can lead to false interpretations,” notes the platform.
The Californian firm has been mobilizing since 2018 against disinformation, amplified by networks like its own, and which is damaging to its reputation. The current health crisis has sparked an explosion of fake news, scams and conspiracy theories, about the causes, precautions and remedies for coronavirus. In April, Facebook said it had already redirected almost 2 billion users, or almost all of its users, to information from public health authorities, through its “Covid-19 information center”, available on each news feed.
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