📰 Facebook Waited Too Long To Stop 10 Billion Pageviewsof Repeat Misinformation Spreaders

Facebook could have prevented more than 10bn pageviews of prominent misinformation-spreading accounts in the US if it had acted sooner in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, a new report has claimed [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. Financial Times: The social media giant took a number of eleventh-hour steps to combat misinformation ahead of November's highly polarised election, such as demoting some misinformation superspreaders and blocking new political advertisements. However according to the US-based non-profit activism group Avaaz, if the platform had tweaked its algorithm and moderation policies in March last year, instead of waiting until October, it would have prevented an estimated 10.1bn additional pageviews on the 100 top-performing pages it classified as repeat spreaders of misinformation. The list comprised pages that Avaaz had identified as sharing at least three misinformation claims that were fact-checked between October 2019 and October 2020, with at least two of the posts falling within 90 days of each other. The report said that Facebook's delay in acting had been critical because it allowed prolific spreaders of misinformation to increase their online footprint dramatically, with some tripling their engagement over the course of the election campaign and even catching up with mainstream US media pages. It added that even after Facebook acted to block top-performing misinformation pages from October 10, the effect was inconsistent. While the average decline in interaction was 28 per cent, not all major figures were affected.

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