This time there is no politics at stake, nor absurd conspiracy theories that are born and spread on Facebook. This time the price to pay is public health. For this reason, with an unprecedented announcement, the most famous social network in the world has made it known that it will delete accounts, posts, stories and paid ads containing fake news about vaccines and the pandemic of Covid-19. Not only that, the squeeze that will start from Facebook will then also be extended to Instagram, another popular platform owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
The information will be checked by a scientific committee which will have the task of judging their reliability. "We will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a focus on pages, groups and accounts that violate the rules, and will continue to expand our restrictions over the coming weeks," said Guy Rose, the man tasked with checking content. spread on Facebook and Instagram.
To pass under the new ax will not only be the accounts of those who spread fake news, but also those of those who share them helping to make them go viral.
For years Facebook has been at the center of global controversy because it is accused of not putting any brake on the disinformation on politics, the economy, health that is expanding, nurturing populist and conspiracy theories without foundation. Already in April last year, shortly after the global explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic, Facebook began to mark as fake news and make content containing less visible false or misleading information about the emergency. From today these contents will be deleted.
However, the new interventionism of the social network will not only concern health. It is now known that, after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, Facebook decided to suspend the account of the former US president indefinitely, Donald Trump, currently under impeachment for the Capitol Hill events.
Today, Friday February 12, the social network also announced that it will limit profiles related to the military junta of Myanmar, which on February 1 had taken power through a coup with the aim of "reducing the number of people who can see the contents" published on the official page of the military junta and on that of its spokesman who therefore will no longer appear among the suggested pages. The crackdown will also affect "any other junta-controlled page that repeatedly violates our disinformation policies." In parallel, Facebook "is protecting content, including political interventions, that allow Burmese to express themselves and show the world what is happening in their country".
