“In dozens of countries, in cooperation with public institutions, we have launched Messenger and WhatsApp chatbots, which allow people to easily access reliable information. In Poland we have launch them thanks to cooperation with the Chancellery of the Prime Minister”, said Jakub Turowski, the Facebook’s head of team for Public policy for Poland, Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria, quoted by the cyberdefence24.pl.
In the talk with the portal, Turkowski admitted that “the pandemic has clearly shown the meaning of reliable sources of information for public health and security”.
“In the situation when the reliability of information can affect human health and life on massive scale, minimalization of the spread of disinformation and augmenting the reach of institutions of public health has key meaning”, he said.
According to Turowski, one of the key elements of the fight against “the infodemic in the pandemic” was the creation of the centre for information about COVID-19, which is constantly updated with information coming from reliable sources such as the Ministry of Health or WHO.
“Thanks to the centre, which operates in 189 countries and a notification in the newsfeed we have managed to connect 2 billion people all around the world with reliable information about the pandemic”, added Turowski.
On one hand, the words of the social media giant’s representative can be taken at face value – on the other hand, as putting a brave face on things. Let’s remind that in October we wrote about international research by the International Centre for Journalists and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the University of Columbia that point out that Facebook is the biggest disinformation outlet in the Web, despite its cooperation with many governments and factchecking and fake news debunking centres.
Apparently, the Facebook’s management realises it – Turowski responds evasively to the question if they hav managed to deal with the flooding of disinformation. The head of Facebook public policy points out that it is difficult to compare current pandemic with any other modern event.
‘There is no way to clearly judge if we have managed this question well or badly, but it is definitely worth to draw some conclusions for the future from this experience in order to better face new challenges. For example, the Centre for information about COVID-19, which was the central element of our fight against the disinformation, will serve us to create on our platforms the Centre for information about the climate’, he added.
WM
Sources: cyberdefence24.pl /stopfake.org
