In response to a request from Meta, the Oversight Board has issued its recommendations on how the company handles health-related misinformation, saying it needs to adopt more rigorous scrutiny.
While Meta removed 27 million pieces of Covid-19 misinformation from Facebook and Instagram between March 2020 and July 2022 - 1.3 million of which were restored through appeal - the boardIt wants the company to commission an assessment into how its recommendation algorithms, newsfeed and other features have amplified harmful health information, and to look at whether groups which are susceptible to misinformation were targeted by Meta’s design choices.
It is also calling for the company to do more to support independent research by allowing greater access to information which is not in the public domain. "Meta should listen to a range of voices on this - including dissenting voices - to ensure the right to freedom of expression is protected online and to make sure we don’t default to removing more content than is necessary. Such a measured approach can avoid opening the floodgates to harmful content without knowing who it will reach and the impact it might have," says Thomas Hughes, director of the Oversight Board.
"We are concerned that Meta has shown no evidence that it has considered the human rights impact its algorithms and amplification have had on harmful health misinformation." As long as the World Health Organization continues to declare COVID-19 as an international public health emergency, says the board, Meta should continue to remove Covid misinformation that is likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent and significant physical harm.
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