Only 10% of the population had received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And public health officials were worried. were rolling out vaccines to their most vulnerable - the elderly and sick. Yet the need to act urgently couldn’t have been clearer: At that time, states across the U.S. The company also said it took time to consider and implement the changes. In a statement, company spokeswoman Dani Lever said the internal documents “don’t represent the considerable progress we have made since that time in promoting reliable information about COVID-19 and expanding our policies to remove more harmful COVID and vaccine misinformation.” “Is there any reason we wouldn’t do this?” one Facebook employee wrote in response to an internal memo outlining how the platform could rein in anti-vaccine content.įacebook said it did implement many of the study’s findings - but not for another month, a delay that came at a pivotal stage of the global vaccine rollout. Those users also had a 7% decrease in negative interactions on the site.Įmployees at the company reacted to the study with exuberance, according to internal exchanges included in the whistleblower’s documents. The results were striking: a nearly 12% decrease in content that made claims debunked by fact-checkers and an 8% increase in content from authoritative public health organizations such as the WHO or U.S. Instead of seeing posts about vaccines that were chosen based on their popularity, these users saw posts selected for their trustworthiness. To study ways to reduce vaccine misinformation, Facebook researchers changed how posts are ranked for more than 6,000 users in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. But Facebook’s own documents show that when it comes to divisive public health issues like vaccines, engagement-based ranking only emphasizes polarization, disagreement, and doubt. That ranking scheme may work well for innocuous subjects like recipes, dog photos, or the latest viral singalong. Typically, Facebook ranks posts by engagement - the total number of likes, dislikes, comments, and reshares. “These people are selling fear and outrage,” said Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook who is now a vocal critic. The Wall Street Journal reported on some of Facebook’s efforts to deal with anti-vaccine comments last month.įacebook’s response raises questions about whether the company prioritized controversy and division over the health of its users.įacebook's language gaps weaken screening of hate, terrorism They also reveal rank-and-file employees regularly suggested solutions for countering anti-vaccine content on the site, to no avail. The trove of documents shows that in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook carefully investigated how its platforms spread misinformation about life-saving vaccines. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press. In an emailed statement, Facebook said it has made “considerable progress” this year with downgrading vaccine misinformation in users’ feeds.įacebook’s internal discussions were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. ![]() “It drives attention and attention equals eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.” “Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” said Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an internet watchdog group. When another Facebook researcher suggested disabling some comments on vaccine posts in March until the platform could do a better job of tackling anti-vaccine messages lurking in them, that proposal was ignored at the time.Ĭritics say the reason Facebook was slow to take action on the ideas is simple: The tech giant worried it might impact the company’s profits. ![]() Instead, Facebook shelved some suggestions from the study. “Given these results, I’m assuming we’re hoping to launch ASAP,” one Facebook employee wrote, responding to the internal memo about the study. ![]() WASHINGTON (AP) - In March, as claims about the dangers and ineffectiveness of coronavirus vaccines spun across social media and undermined attempts to stop the spread of the virus, some Facebook employees thought they had found a way to help.īy altering how posts about vaccines are ranked in people’s newsfeeds, researchers at the company realized they could curtail the misleading information individuals saw about COVID-19 vaccines and offer users posts from legitimate sources like the World Health Organization.
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