Facebook Removed Numerous Vaccine Misinformation Superspreaders

Facebook Removed Numerous Vaccine Misinformation Superspreaders
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Facebook removed a large amount of pages spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. They continue to remove harmful COVID-19 misinformation and prohibit ads that try to exploit the pandemic for financial gain.

Since the start of the pandemic through June Facebook removed more than 20 million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram globally for violating policies on COVID-19-related misinformation. The company said it has also removed over 3,000 accounts, pages, and groups for repeatedly violating said rules. They have displayed warnings on more than 190 million pieces of COVID-related content on Facebook that third-party fact-checking partners rated as false, partly false, altered or missing context, collaborating with 80 fact-checking organizations in more than 60 languages around the world.

Hate speech content removal has increased over 15 times on Facebook and Instagram since the company first began reporting it. Prevalence of hate speech has decreased for three quarters in a row since they first began reporting it. Facebook said it is due to improvements in proactively detecting hate speech and ranking changes in News Feed.

Prevalence of hate speech on Facebook continued to decrease for the third quarter in a row. In Q2, it was 0.05%, or 5 views per 10,000 views, down from 0.05-0.06%, or 5 to 6 views per 10,000 views in Q1. They removed 31.5 million pieces of hate speech content from Facebook, compared to 25.2 million in Q1, and 9.8 million from Instagram, up from 6.3 million in Q1. Investments in AI enable them to detect more kinds of hate speech violations on Facebook and Instagram.