According to a report by advocacy group, Avaaz, misleading health
content has garnered an estimated 3.8 billion views on Facebook Inc over the
past year. This rate is further peaking during
the COVID-19 pandemic, reported news agency Reuters.

Content from 10 “superspreader” sites sharing misinformation on health had almost four times the views in April 2020 compared to that of 10 leading
health institutions like the World Health Organisation and Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, the report said.

Facebook is under a lot of pressure to curb misinformation, which spreads through the platform. The social media giant has now made amplifying credible health
information a key element of its response. It has started removing posts that
spread misinformation about coronavirus, saying that it could cause imminent
harm.

“Facebook’s algorithm is a major threat to public health.
Mark Zuckerberg promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic,
but his algorithm is sabotaging those efforts by driving many of Facebook’s 2.7
billion users to health misinformation-spreading networks,” said Fadi
Quran, campaign director at Avaaz.

“We share Avaaz’s goal of
limiting misinformation, but their findings don’t reflect the steps we’ve taken
to keep it from spreading on our services,” said a Facebook company
spokeswoman.

“Thanks to our global network of fact-checkers, from April to June, we
applied warning labels to 98 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation and
removed 7 million pieces of content that could lead to imminent harm. We’ve
directed over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities and when
someone tries to share a link about COVID-19, we show them a pop-up to connect
them with credible health information,” she said.

Avaaz’s report also said that
warning labels from fact-checkers were applied inconsistently even when
misinformation had been found to be false, reported Reuters.