Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc has asked its Oversight Board to review the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policies to see if they should remain in place.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote Tuesday that Meta’s policies were created during “extraordinary circumstances” and that the rules meant Meta removed Covid-related misinformation “on an unprecedented scale”.
Covid misinformation posed a risk of “imminent physical harm”, leading the company to remove more than 25 million posts, videos and comments about the virus since the start of the pandemic, Meta said. Hundreds of millions of other posts were labelled with warnings by fact checkers.
“Resolving the inherent tensions between free expression and safety isn’t easy, especially when confronted with unprecedented and fast-moving challenges, as we have been in the pandemic,” Clegg wrote. “That’s why we are seeking the advice of the Oversight Board in this case. Its guidance will also help us respond to future public health emergencies.”
The pandemic has not receded. In the US, there are more than 120,000 new cases per day on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meta said it is still “committed to combating Covid-19 misinformation” and is asking the board if there are better ways to counteract it, like labeling or demoting content in users’ feeds. Advice from public health officials is more readily available now, Clegg acknowledged. “The world has changed considerably since 2020,” he said. – Bloomberg
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