Facebook to Start Alerting People Who Like Fake Coronavirus News and Posts

While the coronavirus itself is definitely a really big crisis that the world is dealing with, there are extraneous issues that are surrounding the outbreaks of the virus that are also proving to be pretty significant problems all in all. A big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that people are scrambling to learn as much as possible and they really aren’t vetting their sources all that much which is causing a number of problems along the way.

Facebook is a popular place for people to share and receive news, and so it has become a hub for fake news as well. The social media platform has done a lot to introduce new features and remove posts that have fake news in them but this is not enough because of the fact that people are still finding a way to spread fake news despite of all of the precautions that are being taken in this regard.

Hence, Facebook is deciding to take another step to further prevent the spread of misinformation and the company is doing this by marking fake news and misinformation and giving users a notification when they have liked something that has false news in it.

This will help people understand the kind of information they are actually reading, and it would facilitate a better understanding for a lot of people who might not actually know all that much about the kind of crisis that the world might be currently facing.
"We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed. These messages will connect people to COVID-19 myths debunked by the WHO including ones we’ve removed from our platform for leading to imminent physical harm.", announced Guy Rosen, Facebook's VP Integrity in a blog post. Adding further, "To make it easier for people to find accurate information about COVID-19, we recently added a new section to our COVID-19 Information Center called Get the Facts. It includes fact-checked articles from our partners that debunk misinformation about the coronavirus."
Steps like this are very important because they can help in the fight against misinformation which can often end up causing physical harm in situations where people would be encouraged to consume something harmful because of the fact that it would supposedly protect them from the virus, several cases of which have already been seen.



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