The coronavirus pandemic has led to an influx of posts that implore people to take care of themselves and others that deliberately spread false information about the disease. If you are a social network of Facebook’s scale, you would have put in place measures to prevent the latter from happening.
It was reported that Facebook had marked some posts about the coronavirus as spam. Facebook’s vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen blamed a bug that incorrectly marked some post on the network as spam.
People complained about this issue on social media, like this guy who is a moderator of a huge community group.
Something really weird is happening on @Facebook. A bunch of coronavirus posts from good sources like Atlantic and Politico are being flagged as spam. Happening to me and others. I'm the moderator of a huge community group, vetting medical info 15 hours a day. FB, don't do this!
— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) March 17, 2020
Posts of several news sites that were coronavirus related were all flagged and it included reputable sites like the Atlantic and Politico.
“We’ve restored all the posts that were incorrectly removed which included posts on all topics-not just those related to COVID-19,” Rosen said. “this was an issue with an automated system that removes links to abusive websites, but incorrectly removed a lot of other posts too.
This weirdly follows a statement by Facebook on their blog about how they will keep people safe and informed about the coronavirus. They said they’ll make sure that everyone has accurate information and they will stop misinformation and harmful content on the site. They also bolstered the fact-checkers program where they launched a $1 million grant program to increase capacity during this pandemic.
Facebook has promised to fix that bug which was worldwide which has the potential of limiting access to useful information about the pandemic.
