International research conducted by the International Center for Journalists and Tow Center for Digital Journalism point out that Facebook is the biggest Internet disinformation outlet.
The research started in April 2020 and was aimed to study the coronavirus crisis influence on the journalism around the world. As we can read in the “Guardian”, journalists identified Facebook as the biggest source of disinformation about the threat of Covid-19. All of it despite Facebook’s promises to end the spread of conspiracy theories. Apparently, nothing like this has happened – in April alone the profiles spreading disinformation had almost half a billion views on Facebook.
Moreover, according to the report prepared for the German Marshall Fund Digital (GMFD), the involvement of users with the sources spreading fake news has risen by over a 100% compared with the year 2016 – the period of previous presidential electoral campaign. It is not all. The Defence24.pl portal points out that the portals that manipulate content and show it in irresponsible manner have the highest popularity. The latter is concerning, because, as we read: “portals manipulating the facts are less susceptible to be discovered by fact-checkers and to be marked as false”.
“Disinformation is infecting our democratic discourse at rates that threaten the long-term health of our democracy. A handful of sites masquerading as news outlets are spreading even more outright false and manipulative information than in the run-up to the 2016 election”, the authors of the GMFD report stated. Meanwhile, Facebook declares that it is fighting not only against this particular problem. The Giant from the Silicon Valley has announced that it is updating its policy in a way that will allow it to ban the content denying or distorting the knowledge about the Holocaust. This sphere has also been pointed out by the journalists as the main topic of “prolific disinformation”. The Facebook’s declaration was welcomed by the Auschwitz Committee, the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute, World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee.
WM
Sources: PAP, The Guardian, defence24.pl
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