Facebook's algorithms have allowed users of the social network to view content that contains false information about medicine more than 3.5 billion times. This was reported by researchers from the Avaaz public organization.
The report found that views of 10 pages with false medical information were four times the views of the equivalent content of the world's top 10 healthcare institutions. Also, the data of the social network for the last year was studied. As a result, the organization found out that the peak of views of content with disinformation fell on April of this year.
"Facebook's algorithm poses a serious threat to public health. Mark Zuckerberg promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic, but his algorithm shows the opposite, leading many of Facebook's 2.7 billion users to pages spreading misinformation about health and medicine," said an Avaaz spokesman.
The NGO noted that only 16% of all analyzed health disinformation had a warning label from Facebook. The study also reported that 42 Facebook pages with false information about the coronavirus, followed by 28 million people and which collected about 800 million views were found.
Earlier Facebook said that it is ready to provide maps of the movement of users of the social network to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
