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Facebook To Label, Add Information To Posts on Covid-19 Vaccine (bloomberg.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.
Facebook, trying to counteract the spread of false information about vaccines, is planning to label posts about Covid-19 shots with a link to information from medical authorities including the World Health Organization. From a report: On Facebook-owned Instagram, which already has information labels on some posts, the wording will become clearer on messages from users seeking to discourage people from getting shots. For example, the company plans to say on some posts that "Covid-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness before they're approved." Facebook and Instagram have been used for years to spread fear about vaccines, because information with the potential to scare others and spark emotions has a better chance of getting shared and commented on, boosting it into more feeds on the platforms. The company, seeing the rise in vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, has started to take stronger measures, banning repeat offenders who spend false information and directing users to a central Covid-19 information center. It announced the new labels Monday in a blog post.
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Facebook To Label, Add Information To Posts on Covid-19 Vaccine More

Facebook To Label, Add Information To Posts on Covid-19 Vaccine

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  • FTFS: information with the potential to scare others and spark emotions has a better chance of getting shared and commented on

    Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit 19843 as to why social media is evil and needs to be euthanized.

    • I'm not disagreeing, but where do you draw the line? web forums? email? Usenet? SMS? telephone? snail mail?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nwaack ( 3482871 )
        IMO, the line should get drawn at the point where the company responsible for the service is doing everything in its power, including using our own psychology against us, to manipulate us and get us addicted to its service. That's the line in the sand for me.
      • I draw the line somewhere around where the Solarians [wikipedia.org] did.

        I mean, hanging around fellow meat bags is just gross.

      • I'm not disagreeing, but where do you draw the line? web forums? email? Usenet? SMS? telephone? snail mail?

        For most Slashdotters that line is "does this site require having friends".

    • Nothing wrong with Facebook, and by extension Google and Twitter, revolting their 230 protection and making them libel for fact they check, and post they take down or alter. A few more things we can add like extending first amendment protections to social media and slapping civil and criminal penalties for violation this protection and closing any account with out a court order.

      • You should probably actually understand things like the first amendment before you talk about modifying laws.

        Hint: "First Amendment protections to social media" violates the first amendment.

        • No it won't.

          • Social media companies have first amendment rights. Such as freedom of association. Which means they have the right to ban, just like you have the right to throw someone out of your house.

            Their freedom of speech also includes the right to not speak. And you're insisting that they do speak.

  • Ministry of Truth (Score:5, Funny)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:36AM (#61160690) Homepage Journal

    It must be true, because I read it on Facebook!

  • Tiny patches on a huge broken system. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Esteanil ( 710082 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:38AM (#61160696) Homepage Journal

    Facebook is broken, and it's broken by design.

    These tiny patches they add on to correct their worst outrages are nothing but measures to avoid the regulation that is absolutely required to stop the dread that Facebook has become. The basic problem is that they keep optimizing for engagement, desperate to keep growing the beast, and that the most engaging content is everything that causes outrage. They know this problem, and they won't fix it because fixing it might limit their growth.

    At this point, Facebook is little but a cancer on society.

    I direct your attention to https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com] (Which Facebook seems to be ensuring doesn't show up in anyone's feed - you can post it there, but it'll receive zero engagement), and the Twitter thread that discusses how Facebook has been working on killing this story: https://twitter.com/glichfield... [twitter.com]

    • Re:Tiny patches on a huge broken system. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:17PM (#61160868)
      Facebook optimizes for engagement, sure, and maybe that's problematic. But that isn't the issue here. Misinformation-campaigners optimize for engagement as well. Even if Facebook went to a purely chronological newsfeed, purveyors of misinformation are more active than purveyors of accurate information and so engagement with fallacies would still be significantly higher. By labeling disinformation and discouraging interacting with it, FB is really attacking both problems including that for which you criticize them.

      Also optimizing for engagement by itself would not lead to misinformation bubbling up if that misinformation didn't have concerted efforts behind it. The things that get the most organic engagement are cats and babies and if there weren't well-funded attempts to manipulate the algorithms, optimizing for engagement would mean that I'm always up-to-date on my friends' children and pets which seems like a fine use of social media.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jwdb ( 526327 )

        Also optimizing for engagement by itself would not lead to misinformation bubbling up if that misinformation didn't have concerted efforts behind it. The things that get the most organic engagement are cats and babies and if there weren't well-funded attempts to manipulate the algorithms, optimizing for engagement would mean that I'm always up-to-date on my friends' children and pets which seems like a fine use of social media.

        I'm not convinced that's true, and the article almost explicitly states that the

  • The results of the first clinical trial were muddled by poor process control (necessitating a second ongoing trial in the US) and there is concern (maybe justified maybe not) that it causes severe blood clots. South Africa stopped administering it because their health authorities believed it to be insufficiently effective in real world use.

    It's quite possible this is a failed vaccine. Merck's vaccine didn't do so well so they dropped it. It happens, even to big boys like Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

    An

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      The results of the first clinical trial were muddled by poor process control (necessitating a second ongoing trial in the US) and there is concern (maybe justified maybe not) that it causes severe blood clots. South Africa stopped administering it because their health authorities believed it to be insufficiently effective in real world use.

      It's quite possible this is a failed vaccine.

      It seems to be the most effective at reducing the need for hospital admission. The blood clot thing is just the EU doing an extended "we didn't want your smelly vaccine anyway" snit to cover up their total incompetence as far as I can see. Meanwhile people are dying in much bigger numbers than the three or four than had clots (a rate which is normal for the population size).

      But enough people saying it's bad will make it fail whether it is bad or not.

    • What's Facebook to do if someone posts a news story about the drawbacks of AstraZeneca or the failure or Merck, or the fact that J&J looks like it's less effective than the mRNA or Novavax "kinda like killed virus" vaccine?

      Presently it labels it as a Russian troll because its "fact checking services" say so. You can try.

      The fact is - FDA picked up that their trial results are dependent on manufacturing straight away and is yet to give them authorisation.

      Before I went to the dark side of IT, I went through biotechnology at roughly what is A-level in UK, foilowed by a MSc in Chemistry. I can tell you SCALE UP IS HARD. It is f*cking rocket science.

      I remember cruising through on autopilot through all other courses except th

    • What's Facebook to do if someone posts a news story about the drawbacks of AstraZeneca or the failure or Merck, or the fact that J&J looks like it's less effective than the mRNA or Novavax "kinda like killed virus" vaccine?

      Absolutely nothing. You can post those stories all you want. Here's a good link that lays out quite a few facts and isn't trying to spread sensational misinformation

      Now if you post a misleading piece, that's a different issue.

      https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/1... [cnbc.com]

  • At some point companies can only do so much to give out factual information. Despite this, there will always be a set of people who will absolutely refuse to believe the facts.

    It is this second group we need to stop worrying about. If they're too stupid to trust reputable sources such as the CDC, the Mayo Clinic and so on, but will instead blindly follow what Billy Bob on Facebook says, do we really want them around?

    • But what if the stupid start killing the smart ?

      I would be all about removing all regulations about seatbelts, drunk driving, etc, if non-seatbelt-wearers and drunk drivers only killed themselves. But drunk drivers kill other people, non-seatbelt-wearers either kill themselves and let their children become a burden on society, or become disabled and are a burden on society themselves. Anti-vaxxers don't vaxinate their children, who then become sick and infect other people who can't, for one reason or anothe

    • There isn't a mechanism to only cull the people you want to cull. So ignoring them just lets them do a great deal of damage to all the rest of us.

  • Same WHO whose "experts" have stakes in Chinese corporations and loved how well treated they were during the zero transparency COVID investigation.

  • Where would the common person be without the 'fact checkers' or the experts in the media or social media? It used to be I had to read things and use my brain; but then these mere mortals evolved into demi-gods and have gained power and wisdom above that of the common man.

    I used to think I valued freedom and independence and individual liberty but then Trump and Covid came and I got scared, really scared. Scared enough to give it all up - forever! I prayed to the great Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky to

    • The common person would be mislead by the overwhelming about of misinformation out there. Most of us on /. are not "common persons" in that we have a significantly higher amount of education (formal or informal) and knowledge than the average person. Those who want to push misinformation have more time and resources than those interested in finding the truth. Without some attempt to level the playing field, many (even knowledgeable people) have trouble separating fact from fiction. Social media inadvert

      • You're entirely wrong; social media opened the door to hear all sides of a story and we often hear it with more clarity and with more fullness of fact than we do hearing it regurgitated from a bias media with whatever agenda they may have. The media and social media by extension (since they've outsourced the job of truth and fact back to the legacy media) isn't interested in portraying truth. They're interested in getting clicks, traffic and ad revenue while portraying events in a way that flatters their wo

        • I have no idea what you are even talking about. I saw somebody else mention that there was a WaPo retraction but since I subscribe to (and read) the Washington Post and haven't seen the retraction, I went Googling and all I find is this.

          I'll ask you for a credible source and you may have a link to a lesser-known media outlet. But thanks, the word of the district attorney who is actually investigating this case goes a lot further than some random person who knows how to register a domain name.

          https:// [wwnytv.com]

        • Replying to myself, I did find this.

          So if the worst thing WaPo got wrong was that the quote was heard second-hand and wasn't completely accurate (but the altered version carried the same meaning), yeah I'll also stick with the Washington Post, thanks.

          When the best that Trump supporters can come up with is "He incited election fraud using different words than originally reported," it's not the WaPo that loses credibility!

          https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

          • Literally not what happened. Great example of the arbiters of truth not knowing wtf they're talking about.

            Before: "Find the fraud" "You'll be a national hero".
            Now: “Something bad happened” “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,”

            It's literally asking them to investigate election fraud. The rest is an opinion, which btw is what you linked to.

            Next piece of evidence: The hunter biden story is...wait for it...RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION...I'd laugh if it weren't so sad. It

            • The WaPo published a transcript of the call! You can read it yourself on their web site. That's the epitome of transparency. There are three ways to read this transcript. The first is that Trump actually believes his own conspiracy theories (scary), the second is that Trump does not believe the conspiracy theories but thinks he can convince Georgia officials so that they will take illegal action to change the election outcome, or thirdly maybe he knows that he can't convince the Georgia officials but is

              • WaPo published the call because they had no other choice now that their credibility on the piece was reduced to nothing after blindly trusting a single source in a game of telephone. Going back to the guys that got it wrong to get the truth now seems like some sort of abusive relationship to me.

                I don't claim to be an expert on voter fraud, but verbatim, he is only asking for fraud to be investigated and he believes there is and was fraud. It's your OPINION that he is asking for election rigging.

                https://www. [businessinsider.com]

                • Also, calling something a "conspiracy theory" is just a new lazy way to dismiss a claim with out having to address the merit of the claim. I'm honestly embarrassed and ashamed for todays emotionally demolished left. In such a tizzy over the orange man that they've sacrificed all intellect and intelligence in favor of spite and vengeance. "By any means necessary" right?

  • What does Facebook have to do with vaccines in any form? And choosing to take a vaccine for a particular virus or not usually depends on the risk associated with getting said virus. Do you screw around often? Maybe get that HPV vaccine. Work with lots of people who may have the flu, then get the flu vaccine. Do you work with wild animals? Then get the rabies vaccine (which has lots of side effects).

    • What does Facebook have to do with vaccines in any form?

      Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.

      Humans enjoy talking to each other about a variety of subjects on any platform where they can communicate. Those subjects can include vaccines, and humans can spread propaganda about those vaccines to further whatever agenda they support. Humans even manage to spread information that directly harms them, in the mistaken belief that they will not be harmed.

      Also, you're going to need to keep your towel in your backpack. Most humans do not carry around towels, despite the

  • For example, the company plans to say on some posts that "Covid-19 vaccines go through many tests for safety and effectiveness before they're approved."

    When someone posts that "The vaccine is safe and effective.", is Facebook going to point out that it is not effective on everyone and that vaccines that have been tested and approved have caused problems in the past.

    I received my first dose of the Pfizer on Friday and am not an anti vaxxer but am anti dumb a$$ companies fact checking anything.

  • Can Facebook label itself? I can think of a few labels that apply.

  • Fakebook will ban you for saying things like "We don't know the long-term effects of the COVID vaccines", despite this being a logical tautology.
    • No, Facebook will not ban you for saying this. Although you probably shouldn't. You may get fact-checked. The statement may be a "logical tautology" when looked at in isolation but presented that way it is misleading. It might trigger concern about safety of the vaccine. If you want to make a statement that is accurate and not misleading you would say "We don't know the long-term effects of the COVID vaccines but given their similarity to other vaccines that we do know are safe, effective, and have no

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