Meta is rethinking the rules established at the beginning of the pandemic to combat disinformation about the Covid-19 on their social networks. The technology, of which they are part Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApphas announced that it has left in the hands of its supervisory board, which works autonomously, the possibility of remove restrictions on posting content established when the pandemic was taking its first breaths.
“As the pandemic has evolved, the time is right for us to seek the opinion of the supervisory board on our measures to address misinformation about COVID-19, even if those were introduced in the first days of an extraordinary global crisis. are still the right approach for the months and years ahead,” he said. Nick Cleggpresident of global affairs for the technology company.
With the arrival of the pandemic, Meta began to eliminate those publications about Covid that contained false information that could endanger life or health of Internet users. In the event that the oversight board points out the need to make changes to the rules, these types of ‘posts’ could begin to be relegated by the algorithm or labeled as false instead of being directly deleted.
Clegg points out that during the more than two years that we have been living with the virus, Meta has removed 25 million posts considered false. These include false claims about the use of masks, social distancing and the transmissibility of the virus.
“At the end of 2020, when the first vaccine became available, we also started removing more false claims, such as that the vaccine was harmful or ineffective. Meta’s policy currently provides for the removal of 80 different false claims about Covid-19 and vaccines,” explains the executive.
The situation has changed
In the statement, Clegg points out that, since the start of the pandemic, the world has changed a lot, and that now, in the middle of the summer of 2022, it is time to review whether it makes sense to maintain the measures extraordinary measures imposed in 2020: “In many countries, where vaccination rates are relatively high, life is increasingly returning to normal.”
However, it recognizes that the evolution of the pandemic is not the same in all the countries of the world, which is why they hope that the supervisory board will make the final decision: «It is important that any policy that Meta implements is appropriate for all the range of circumstances in which countries find themselves.