July 27, 2022 – Facebook’s parent Meta, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is consulting the company’s independent Oversight Board to decide whether its current restrictions on Covid-19 misinformation are still appropriate.
“Meta remains committed to combating COVID-19 misinformation and providing people with reliable information,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in a statement posted on Tuesday. “As the pandemic has evolved, the time is right for us to seek input from the Oversight Board about our measures to address COVID-19 misinformation, including whether those introduced in the early days of an extraordinary global crisis remains the right approach for the months and years ahead.”
Meta announced the policy to remove false and misleading claims related to Covid-19 in March of 2020 as cases started rising, sending economies plunging with lockdowns around the world. The company is now considering a shift in the way it deals with Covid-19 misinformation across its platforms by labelling it as false or demoting such content instead of removing it.
Meta has asked the Oversight Board for an opinion on whether the strict restrictions on coronavirus misinformation are still needed, citing Meta’s own Covid-19 Information Centre and countries with higher vaccination rates.
“The policies in our Community Standards seek to protect free expression while preventing this dangerous content,” said Clegg. “But resolving the inherent tensions between free expression and safety isn’t easy, especially when confronted with unprecedented and fast-moving challenges, as we have been in the pandemic. That’s why we are seeking the advice of the Oversight Board in this case.”
Clegg added that guidance from the Oversight Board will also help Meta respond to public health emergencies in the future.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had updated users on Meta’s response to the pandemic on March 3, 2020, saying that it was not right to share information that put people in danger.
“So we’re removing false claims and conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organisations,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “We’re also blocking people from running ads that try to exploit the situation – for example, claiming that their product can cure the disease.”
Meta’s Oversight Board, consisting of human rights activists, lawyers and academics, was set up by Zuckerberg in November 2018 and was officially launched in October 2020. It was created after the company surpassed two billion users worldwide. The main purpose of the Oversight Board’s creation was to help Meta with the handling of matters related to freedom of speech and online safety of its users.
The board also accepts appeals directly from users seeking the removal or restoration of specific content on Meta platforms after exhausting respective appeals process. Meta is not bound to adopt recommendations by the board, but the company must respond to the board’s reviews and assessments.
