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Facebook, Twitter and Google are working with a coalition of governments, including the UK and Canada, to fight disinformation and conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations.
Formed by the UK fact-checking body Full Fact, the new working group will aim to define cross-platform standards to tackle disinformation, as well as holding organizations accountable for their failure to do so.
“Bad information ruins lives and we all have a responsibility to fight it where we see it,” said Full Fact chief executive Will Moy. “The coronavirus pandemic and the wave of false claims that followed have demonstrated the need for a collective approach to this problem.
“A coronavirus vaccine is now potentially just a few months away. But bad information could undermine confidence in medicine when it matters most and ultimately prolong this pandemic.”
In addition to the three technology companies, the partnership includes the UK’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Canada’s Privy Council Office, fact-checkers from South Africa, India, Argentina and Spain, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and the First Draft of Nonprofit Journalism.
Initial funding support comes from Facebook, which will help Full Fact draft the initial framework for January 2021. The two companies have a history together: Full Fact was the first UK fact-checking partner for the anti-disinformation program of Facebook.
“Working together to counter disinformation is really important, especially the bad content around the Covid-19 pandemic right now,” said Keren Goldshlager, head of partnerships for integrity at Facebook. “We have seen tremendous value in partnering with over 80 independent fact-checkers globally to combat disinformation in 60 languages.
“We welcome this effort to bring together more technology companies, fact-checkers, researchers and governments to discuss and develop new strategies so that we can work together even more effectively in the future.”
Vaccine misinformation has long been a challenge for social networks even before the imminent introduction of a Covid vaccine made the matter more pressing. For years, Facebook has freely allowed anti-vaccination content, even though its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has led a $ 3 billion charitable effort to “cure all diseases.” In March 2019, it caved in slightly and banned anti-vax ads that included vaccine misinformation; in October of this year it went further and banned all anti-vax advertising, except advertising with a political message.
But “organic content” – posts and groups advocating vaccines – are still allowed. Misinformation in that category is not explicitly prohibited, although it may be flagged for review by third-party fact-checkers.
Even YouTube has only recently begun to take serious action against vaccine misinformation. In October, a week after Facebook’s policy change, Google’s video-sharing site announced a ban on disinformation on Covid vaccinations in particular. According to the policy, the videos cannot contain false allegations that a Covid vaccine would kill people or cause infertility, or claim that it would somehow implant microchips in recipients.
The latest action comes after the British Labor Party called for sanctions against social media companies that fail to “eliminate dangerous anti-vaccine content”.
In a letter to the secretary of culture, Oliver Dowden, Jo Stevens and Jonathan Ashworth of Labor warned that the spread of such disinformation and disinformation posed a “real and present danger” to public health.
“It has been clear for years that this is a widespread and growing problem and the government knows, because Labor has long warned them, that it poses a real threat to vaccine adoption,” Stevens said.
“This is literally a matter of life or death and anyone who is dissuaded from being vaccinated for that reason is one person too many.”
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