A report released by activist group Avaaz has suggested that health misinformation found on Facebook could be a major threat" to public health.
The Avaaz research revealed that health misinformation on Facebook was viewed 3.8 billion times in the past year, particularly during the Covid-19 crisis, posing a potential threat to public health.
The researchers also found that false claims about vaccines on the platform could limit the number of people prepared to receive a Covid-19 vaccine if one became available.
Facebook's response
According to the social network, the research findings did "not reflect the steps we've taken".
In a statement, Facebook said: "We share Avaaz's goal of limiting misinformation. Thanks to our global network of fact-checkers, from April to June, we applied warning labels to 98 million pieces of Covid-19 misinformation and removed seven million pieces of content that could lead to imminent harm."
It added: "We've directed over two billion people to resources from health authorities and when someone tries to share a link about Covid-19, we show them a pop-up to connect them with credible health information."
Misinformation and fake cures
Despite Facebook's efforts to crack down on misinformation, the Avaaz report showed that only 16% of the health misinformation it identified on Facebook carried a warning label.
It also determined that compared to information from official sites, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the top 10 websites they identified as spreading health misinformation had almost four times as many views on the platform.
Most of the health misinformation was shared from public pages and 42 of those pages were followed by more than 28 million people.
Among the misinformation they found from those pages was an article viewed 8.4 million times, which claimed that Bill Gates backed a polio vaccination that led to the paralysis of half a million children in India.
The researchers also found an article containing bogus cures for deadly diseases, such as colloidal silver for Ebola, which had 4.5 million views, and  an article claiming that quarantine harmed public health, which was viewed 2.4 million times.
Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran said: "Facebook's algorithm is a major threat to public health. Mark Zuckerberg promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic. But his algorithm is sabotaging those efforts by driving many of Facebook's 2.7 billion users to health-misinformation-spreading networks."
"This info-demic will make the pandemic worse unless Facebook detoxifies its algorithm and provides corrections to everyone exposed to these viral lies," Quran argued.
Calls to action
Avaaz is calling on Facebook to provide everyone who had viewed health misinformation on its platform with independently fact-checked corrections and to downgrade misinformation posts in news feeds, in order to reduce their reach.
Prof. Frank Ulrich Montgomery, who chairs the World Medical Association, said: "This pandemic should be a powerful reminder of how successful vaccines have been. But instead anti-vaxxers are using Facebook to spread toxic lies and conspiracy theories."
European Union of Medical Specialists secretary general Dr Joao Miguel Grenho pointed out: "Mark Zuckerberg must take immediate action to stand with us to stop this info-demic. Otherwise the number of people poisoned against taking a vaccine will be too high for us to beat this pandemic."
