Coronavirus: Facebook targets conspiracy theorists by directing them to official information

People engaging with dangerous conspiracies will be guided to the WHO's Mythbusters page

Paper circles with the Facebook logo are displayed during the F8 Facebook Developers conference on 30 April, 2019 in San Jose, California (Getty)

Facebook will start targeting users who spread misinformation and engage with conspiracy theories relating to the coronavirus pandemic, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced.

People who post false and dangerous content on the social network will be guided to official information and advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO), while a new section called Get The Facts will also be launched to debunk popular conspiracies.

“Through this crisis, one of my top priorities is making sure that you see accurate and authoritative information across all of our apps,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

Facebook said the messages will connect people with the WHO’s Mythbusters page, which details how a number of claims about Covid-19 are not true.

It said the aim is to try to stop the spread of misinformation offline, as well as on its own platform.

Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said: “We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook.

“People will start seeing these messages in the coming weeks.”

Facebook and wider social media have faced scrutiny over their attempts to stop the spread of misinformation and false claims linked to Covid-19 despite efforts to direct users to official guidance on the virus.

Phone masts have been attacked across the UK after conspiracy theories spread on social media claiming the virus was linked to the roll-out of 5G, despite scientists describing such a theory as “both a physical and biological impossibility” and the industry branding it “utter rubbish”.

Facebook said it has now directed more than two billion people to resources from official health authorities through its own information centre, and displayed warnings on around 40 million posts on the platform which had been rated at least partly false by fact-checkers.

The social network said this process is having an impact, suggesting its figures showed that when people saw these labels, 95% did not go on to view the original content.

However, last week, research from industry regulator Ofcom suggested that nearly half of UK adults online had been exposed to false claims around the virus.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has also met internet giants – including Facebook – to urge a further clampdown on misinformation appearing online.

“To date, we’ve also removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm,” Mr Rosen said.

“Examples of misinformation we’ve removed include harmful claims like drinking bleach cures the virus and theories like physical distancing is ineffective in preventing the disease from spreading.”​

Additional reporting by agencies.