Facebook being a social networking site accessed by billions of people needs to be kept up to date with the current rules and regulations and thus Facebook’s founder made a big announcement regarding the same.
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has officially removed all such content including posts, videos, stories, etc that contain misinformation regarding Covid-19. There are often many users who make a comment or post something without prior research and thus share a log of misinformation on the platform. Facebook has thus corrected this action by removing all the misleading content for its site.
In total Facebook has removed 18 million posts made by its users. Facebook does not wish to reveal the exact numbers of likes and comments that posts have received but has explicitly stated to its users to not engage in such activity again.
Zuckerberg this morning was interviewed by co-host Gayle King of “CBS This Morning” and he stated that any posts that violate the rules and regulations of Facebook will be removed from the app and are against their policies. Mark Zuckerberg will be making a big announcement on “CBS This Morning” so stay tuned for it.
He expressed that these might not be the exact numbers and they must have misled some spots but such errors occur. They have been able to track many posts and have successfully removed them. They gave their best and their systems came up with 18 million posts which is a huge number but not huge in comparison to Facebook’s users count.
Gayle the co-host cleared out that the numbers referred to the number of posts and not how many people viewed them. She expressed her concerns about how such information can be viewed by more than 18 million people or even less but such information can have devastating effects on one’s health. She blamed Facebook for the same.
To this comment, Zuckerberg told Gayle that he understands her frustration but the only thing he knows right now is the number of people who have posted such information, he has no information regarding how many people have viewed it or interacted with it and for the known numbers they have taken appropriate steps.
Now Facebook and even other social networking sites have faced similar criticism for not looking at their users’ activities and promoting the spread of misinformation via social media. Apps like Twitter, Instagram, and even Whatsapp have faced such allegations and have been criticized for not doing anything.
Even Biden, the current US President, in his interviews talks about various social media and networking sites including Facebook who engage in sharing misinformation regarding such a sensitive topic like the Covid-19. He asserted that these sites and apps are the ones that are killing people. In other words, he meant that the news spread by these sites has caused many deaths over the past year.
So social media sites over the past year had various misinformation regarding the Covid-19 vaccine where many influencers shared misinformation about the vaccines. Biden wanted Facebook to correct this issue as soon as possible instead of taking his quotations personally and feeling hurt.
Facebook commented back to Biden stating that they are the ones who have increased vaccination in the USA. Many people have used Facebook’s vaccine finder to book their appointments and in total Facebook has helped 3.3 million people to get vaccinated. Facebook stated that they wouldn’t be withstanding such accusations without strong evidence.
