Facebook will hide conspiracy theorists' posts

Menlo Park begins to stop recommending posts from users who share fake news in a repeat way, accelerating the fight against disinformation

(photo: Getty Images) There is a new step forward in the battle of Facebook against the spread of disinformation on its platform. The Menlo Park social network, in fact, is applying a new tactic that will not only make posts containing misleading information less visible, but will also apply the same treatment to the same users who share them. At the same time, however, Facebook also announced, with a certain taste for the paradox, that by returning to the indeterminate state of the debate, it will no longer remove the posts that claim that the coronavirus, the virus responsible for Covid-19, was created by man. in the laboratory.

The fight against disinformation on its social network has become one of the most heartfelt battles by Facebook in recent years. The company has begun to collaborate more and more with fact-checkers in order to discourage the spread of fake news. The results provided by these partnerships were used to label misinforming posts and, in some cases, Facebook used its algorithms to stop recommending tagged posts to its users leaving its users the freedom to post whatever they wanted without consequences. .

But now the music changes. "Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of posts in a person's news feed if they repeatedly share content that has not been confirmed by one of our fact-checking partners," the company wrote in a post. This means that if a user continues undaunted to share posts labeled as misinforming, Facebook will start treating all posts shared by that user as if they were a source of misinformation, and no longer proposing them on his contact feed.

Simultaneously with this decision Menlo Park changed its policy regarding claims that the coronavirus was created in the laboratory. According to a report by Politico, this change was made "in consultation with public health experts" and came following renewed attention to the origins of the virus, especially after US President Joe Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to investigate the so-called Lab leak hypothesis.

As long as there is not enough evidence to prove the origin of the virus, Facebook will stop labeling the hypothesis as false - and a priori remove from feeds - the hypothesis the escape of the laboratory, which is now considered to be the same as that of contact with an infected animal.


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Coronavirus Facebook Fake news globalData.fldTopic = "Coronavirus, Facebook, Fake news "

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