FACEBOOK has removed 18 million posts containing misinformation about COVID-19, the founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg told “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King in an exclusive interview that misinformation is against his platform’s policy, hence why harmful misinformation is always removed once seen.
“But do we catch everything? Of course, there are mistakes that we make or areas where we need to improve. But that’s the best number that we have in terms of what we’ve seen and what our systems have been able to detect,” he said.
“But how many people have viewed the misinformation? Is it more than 18 million? Is it less than 18 million?”, asked the interviewer.
To which Zuckerberg replied “I understand what you’re saying, the number that I have off the top of my head that I can share is the number of pieces of misinformation that we’ve taken action against.”
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Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms have been criticized for the spread of misinformation, especially regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S President Joe Biden in July accused Facebook and other social media platforms of “killing people” by enabling the spread of COVID-19 misinformation but later clarified that he meant that misinformation itself was causing deaths.
However, Facebook said they actually helped increase vaccine acceptance as people get to view authoritative information.