TRUTH DECAYFacebook Fails to Appropriately Label 80% of Bioweapon Conspiracy Articles n Its Platform

It is no secret that Facebook remains an inviting home to conspiracy theorists and fringe groups, despite the launch of platforms like Parler and Truth Social.

Pandor Reportnotes that in recent years, Facebook and other platforms have begun labeling misleading and false posts with warnings, with varying levels of success. For example, during the early 2021 U.S. Senate election in Georgia (a state where the 2020 presidential election was decided by just 12,000 votes), Facebook failed to apply fact check labels to 60 percent of top-performing posts using false election information.

This has been a recurring theme regarding health information throughout the pandemic as well.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers more examples of the sorry state of Facebook’s monitoring. either. According to a study released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate Similarly, Facebook failed to label 80 percent of articles on its service which promote conspiracy theories about U.S. labs in Ukraine and Ukraine’s supposed intent to use CBW against Russia. The Center also found Facebook fails to label 91 percent of posts containing Russian propaganda about Ukraine posted between 24 February and 14 March this year.

The Center is renewing its calls for Meta to better enforce its use of “false information,” “partly false information,” and “missing context” labels in light of its findings.

“If our researchers can identify false information about Ukraine openly circulating on its platform, it is within Meta’s capability to do the same,” said Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) chief executive Imran Ahmed. “But we found that in the vast majority of cases, conspiracy theories are given a free pass.”