After removing tens of millions of posts, Nick Clegg says the company needs guidance from its Oversight Board

Meta might let anti-vax posts back onto Facebook and Instagram

Today, let’s talk about a settled question that Meta has decided to re-open: what should the company do about misinformation related to COVID-19? Since the earliest days of the pandemic, Meta has sought to remove false claims about the disease from Facebook and Instagram. And for just as long, the company has faced criticism that it hasn’t done a very good job. A year ago this month, asked about the role “platforms like Facebook” played in spreading misinformation about the disease, President Biden said “they’re killing people” — though he walked his statement back a day later.

Still, Biden voiced a fear that is deeply held among Meta critics: that the platform’s huge user base and algorithmic recommendations often combine to help fringe conspiracy theories reach huge mainstream audiences, promoting vaccine hesitancy, resistance to wearing masks, and other public health harms. The pandemic is not close to over — an estimated 439 people died of COVID in the past day, up 34 percent in the past two weeks. And highly infectious Omicron subvariants continue to tear through the country, raising fears of a surge in cases of long COVID — a condition that experts say has already been “a mass disabling event.” An estimated 1 in 13 American adults reported having long COVID symptoms earlier this month, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite that, Meta is now considering whether to relax some of the restrictions it has placed on COVID-related misinformation, including whether to continue removing posts about false claims about vaccines, masks, social distancing, and related subjects. It has asked the Oversight Board an independent group funded by Meta to help it make difficult calls relating to speech for an advisory opinion on how to proceed.

Source: This news is originally published by theverge

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