Labels will contain “credible information” from the World Health Organization (WHO) about the vaccines in English and five other languages, says Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook will add informative labels to posts about vaccines against the new coronavirus in an attempt to step up the fight against Covid-19-related misinformation on social media.
According to the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the labels will contain “credible information” from the World Health Organization (WHO) about the vaccines in English and five other languages, with more languages to be added in the coming weeks.
“For example, we are adding a label to publications discussing the safety of Covid-19 vaccines that states that the vaccines go through safety and efficacy testing before they are approved,” Zuckerberg said.
The social network is also adding a tool to help vaccinate users by linking them to information about where and when they can receive the vaccine.
Facebook and Instagram have been criticized for allowing the spread of anti-vaccination propaganda and for being “awfully slow” in weeding out misinformation, often with fact-checks, labels and other restrictive measures.
“This announcement falls far short of what is needed to address the anti-vaccination crisis is polluting the ‘timelines’ of social media users,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the non-profit organization Center to Fight Digital Hate, a critic of the way social media companies handle hate speech and misinformation.
“Facebook and Instagram still do not remove the vast majority of posts reported to them for containing misinformation and dangerous information about vaccines,” Imran Ahmed said.
“The top anti-vaccine super disseminators are all still present on Instagram or Facebook, despite promises to remove them. And the evidence suggests that the way Facebook applies labels to disinformation posts has minimal impact,” he added.
