Facebook to notify people who 'liked' Coronavirus fake news

David Matthews

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Why it matters: The discovery of Sars-CoV-19 has sparked many conspiracy theories. The 5G theory, in particular, has become increasingly popular, leading to some 5G towers being burned. Facebook is attempting to reduce the impact of Coronavirus fake news by launching an anti-misinformation campaign to redirect users to reputable news sources. Despite those measures, it will be difficult to ensure all 2 billion people on the website will even see legitimate news sources.

There has been a plethora of conspiracy theories regarding the origins of Covid-19 and how it spreads. They can range from being created in a lab (which is seriously being considered by the US) to 5G cellular towers somehow spreading the virus. Facebook is trying to combat misinformation by launching anti-misinformation measures to stave off the spread of false information regarding the Coronavirus.

The first of these measures will be to start showing News Feed messages to people who have interacted with misinformation. This means people who have liked, reacted, or commented on fake news links may see a message linking them to information that has been debunked by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other reputable fact-checking sources.

The second measure is a new section in Facebook's Covid-19 Information Center called Get the Facts. This is essentially a listing of fact check articles that also debunk popular myths about the Coronavirus. These articles are updated every week and are available now in the United States.

Facebook released additional stats regarding its fight against Coronavirus misinformation along with a peek into how it's been trying to slow distribution of those stories:

"Once a piece of content is rated false by fact-checkers, we reduce its distribution and show warning labels with more context. Based on one fact-check, we’re able to kick off similarity detection methods that identify duplicates of debunked stories. For example, during the month of March, we displayed warnings on about 40 million posts related to COVID-19 on Facebook, based on around 4,000 articles by our independent fact-checking partners. When people saw those warning labels, 95% of the time they did not go on to view the original content. To date, we’ve also removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm. 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."

The non-profit group Avaaz published findings that blasted Facebook for being an "epicenter" of misinformation and delaying implementation of anti-misinformation policies. The report is pretty telling and indicative of the massive uphill battle that Facebook and other social media outlets have in spreading misinformation.

Permalink to story.

 
The fact that a major disease lab is less than half a mile from the market where "patient zero" supposedly came from isn't a conspiracy theory - its just a theory, and one that deserves investigation. Unfortunately we know that China's government will continue to lie about every aspect of this mess even if it tears their country apart so the whole truth may never be known. Its already come out that one of the major western immunologists who claimed early on that it's a naturally evolved infection is on China's payroll. The WHO is clearly being heavily influenced by the PRC as well. I rule out nothing at this point.
 
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While I don't subscribe to the idea that 5G is the cause of COVID-19, there is science showing harmful health effects from not only 5G but our current wireless technologies. I wouldn't dismiss it as potentially hurting people's ability to recover from COVID-19.

Here are two doctor's speaking up against a bill for 5G in Michigan:
 
Irresponsible of "Facepuke" to redirect to a "credible" news outlet like the WHO...An organization clearly playing China's tune in smothering the FACT that China knew about the danger and tried to (failing miserably) contain the outbreak. Shameless tech industry trying to pander to a Communist Dictatorship.
 
The fact that a major disease lab is less than half a mile from the market where "patient zero" supposedly came from isn't a conspiracy theory - its just a theory, and one that deserves investigation. Unfortunately we know that China's government will continue to lie about every aspect of this mess even if it tears their country apart so the whole truth may never be known. Its already come out that one of the major western immunologists who claimed early on that it's a naturally evolved infection is on China's payroll. The WHO is clearly being heavily influenced by the PRC as well. I rule out nothing at this point.

It doesn't work like this. You ALWAYS look for the simplest solution (it's called Occam's razor). Quoting Wikipedia: "For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives. Since one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable.".

Here, everything is pointing towards that market in China. Every epidemiologist is saying that this is the source of the virus as it already has been one in the past, several times.

So saying that it is the laboratory from the same city that launched the virus is as smart as saying that the virus has been created by Americans and then has been imported in china.

TL;DR: it is fake news.
 
While I don't subscribe to the idea that 5G is the cause of COVID-19, there is science showing harmful health effects from not only 5G but our current wireless technologies. I wouldn't dismiss it as potentially hurting people's ability to recover from COVID-19.

Here are two doctor's speaking up against a bill for 5G in Michigan:

No, it does not have any impact on human health.
https://www.howtogeek.com/423720/how-worried-should-you-be-about-the-health-risks-of-5g/
 
The only way that Fakebook can regain even a sliver of respectability is to clean the site of each and every one of these video's. It isn't free speech it's FAKE speech and should not be protected for any reason what so ever.
 
Did you watch the video I shared above with the doctors speaking at a hearing for 5G and citing over 3600 studies published to PubMed? You can search and read the science yourself on PubMed. To make it easier, this Italian anti-5G site links to a couple hundred of them. I took the liberty to link with Google Translate:

https://oasisana.com/2020/04/07/basta-complottismo-e-negazionismo-la-scienza-e-chiara-5g-4g-3g-2g-wi-fi-pericolosi-e-dannosi-ecco-alcuni-di-oltre-1-000-studi/

Anyways, I'm not a doctor, nor a scientist (beyond computer science lol). All I'm saying is that the conspiracy theorists are not all just talking nonsense, there is science that agrees with them. Of course to place the blame for COVID-19 on 5G is ridiculous since way more countries have outbreaks than there are countries with 5G. Though I would be interested to learn if there are differences in fatality rates between such countries or even regions.
 
Did you watch the video I shared above with the doctors speaking at a hearing for 5G and citing over 3600 studies published to PubMed? You can search and read the science yourself on PubMed. To make it easier, this Italian anti-5G site links to a couple hundred of them. I took the liberty to link with Google Translate:

https://oasisana.com/2020/04/07/basta-complottismo-e-negazionismo-la-scienza-e-chiara-5g-4g-3g-2g-wi-fi-pericolosi-e-dannosi-ecco-alcuni-di-oltre-1-000-studi/

Anyways, I'm not a doctor, nor a scientist (beyond computer science lol). All I'm saying is that the conspiracy theorists are not all just talking nonsense, there is science that agrees with them. Of course to place the blame for COVID-19 on 5G is ridiculous since way more countries have outbreaks than there are countries with 5G. Though I would be interested to learn if there are differences in fatality rates between such countries or even regions.

Every scientist will never all agree on the same thing. That's why you have to look for what the majority of them knows more than trying to find 2 doctors who disagree.
 
So, let me get this straight:

Facebook is able to identify who looked at or interacted with conspiracy theories. This means they are able to identify these stories. So, why aren't they just removing these stories, and making efforts to remove them quicker?

Oh, right. Ad revenue generated by clicks, regardless of what that click was on.
 
While I don't subscribe to the idea that 5G is the cause of COVID-19, there is science showing harmful health effects from not only 5G but our current wireless technologies. I wouldn't dismiss it as potentially hurting people's ability to recover from COVID-19.

Here are two doctor's speaking up against a bill for 5G in Michigan:

I believe even wi-fi, bluetooth and GSM/3G/4G might have harmful health effects. I always take precautions regarding exposure to these technologies just to be on the safe side. But no doubt that 5G seems to have more harmful / stronger effects than those. Paraphrasing what @psycros has said in his comment, "it's not a conspiracy theory, just a theory".
 
I believe even wi-fi, bluetooth and GSM/3G/4G might have harmful health effects. I always take precautions regarding exposure to these technologies just to be on the safe side. But no doubt that 5G seems to have more harmful / stronger effects than those. Paraphrasing what @psycros has said in his comment, "it's not a conspiracy theory, just a theory".

Putting aside from the fact that the power levels of 5G are still comically low by signal strength standards, there's plenty of studies and re-studies that show no health impacts. The only studies that show anything are typically uncontrolled, look at very small population groups, and are therefore more likely to contain noise in the data. And every time a study like this shows some sort of health impact, it gets restudies (multiple times) and no correlation was found.

You're falling victim to unconscious bias, and are using that to justify the conclusion that 5G is harmful. It's not.
 
The fact that a major disease lab is less than half a mile from the market where "patient zero" supposedly came from isn't a conspiracy theory - its just a theory, and one that deserves investigation. Unfortunately we know that China's government will continue to lie about every aspect of this mess even if it tears their country apart so the whole truth may never be known. Its already come out that one of the major western immunologists who claimed early on that it's a naturally evolved infection is on China's payroll. The WHO is clearly being heavily influenced by the PRC as well. I rule out nothing at this point.

It's almost certainly not engineered, for a few reasons. The simplest two being:

1: China isn't *that* incompetent to have let multiple strains of the same virus (SARS being a distant cousin) escape containment within a single decade.

2: Neither SARS or COVID-19 are suitable as bioweapons; SARS doesn't transmit easily enough, and COVID-19 isn't deadly enough. Heck, the COVID family of viruses really aren't that well suited for the task of being bioweapons.

Then of course that (outside Trump and his supporters) no intelligence agency on the planet thinks the virus is bio-engineered.

The entire argument boils down to China being so incompetent to have multiple viral leaks, yet western intelligence being even more incompetent for not catching China in the act multiple times. That's too much incompetence to go around.

I get it, you want an "easy" explanation and a magic fix. The world doesn't work like that, and honestly, we've been LONG overdue for something like this. My only real question is whether society will adjust, or if things go back to normal until this happens again.
 
Putting aside from the fact that the power levels of 5G are still comically low by signal strength standards, there's plenty of studies and re-studies that show no health impacts. The only studies that show anything are typically uncontrolled, look at very small population groups, and are therefore more likely to contain noise in the data. And every time a study like this shows some sort of health impact, it gets restudies (multiple times) and no correlation was found.

You're falling victim to unconscious bias, and are using that to justify the conclusion that 5G is harmful. It's not.

I'm not trying to justify anything, since I don't have an agenda and don't want to convince you or anyone else. I'm not the kind of person who wear tinfoil hats or refuse to own a wifi router anyways, I just take precautions to avoid overexposure when it's not too unpractical and I'll keep doing that, thank you. Thankfully I live in a very remote rural area so I won't have to worry about 5G near my house.

5G is being widely talked about since at least 2016. Millions of people and thousands of companies have spent billions in money PLUS time and manpower investing in it, and studying it. Just take that into consideration for a minute, it's too much invested to throw it all away without a fight.

Either way, when I take into consideration that you're also trying to defend the indefensible when discussing China, it's clear that you have an agenda and wants to escalate this, so I won't be replying further.
 
2: Neither SARS or COVID-19 are suitable as bioweapons; SARS doesn't transmit easily enough, and COVID-19 isn't deadly enough. Heck, the COVID family of viruses really aren't that well suited for the task of being bioweapons....[ ]...
Oh, so you think a "bio-weapon", has to be 100% deadly to be classified as such? No, a more subtle bio-weapon could shut down entire country's economies, and only have less than a 2% mortality rate. Because at that point, people will think, "it's an accident".

Not too mention that you can easily use human beings as "the delivery vehicle", with a non lethal payload.

The Chi Coms wouldn't think twice about the sacrifice of 4,000 people as "test subjects".

Don't believe me? Read this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516

Just because they're willing to buy US debt, doesn't mean we're friends.

Hell, they're even being kind enough to sell us back our own PPE.
 
Oh, so you think a "bio-weapon", has to be 100% deadly to be classified as such? No, a more subtle bio-weapon could shut down entire country's economies, and only have less than a 2% mortality rate. Because at that point, people will think, "it's an accident".

Not too mention that you can easily use human beings as "the delivery vehicle", with a non lethal payload.

The Chi Coms wouldn't think twice about the sacrifice of 4,000 people as "test subjects".

Don't believe me? Read this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516

Just because they're willing to buy US debt, doesn't mean we're friends.

Hell, they're even being kind enough to sell us back our own PPE.

They are still WAYmore clues that point towards that market than towards china laboratory.
It's like you were saying that unicorns exist but that we didn't found them yet. It doesn't work like that. YOUhave to bring clues pointing towards your argument. We don't have to bring counter-arguments until you have brought those clues.
 
They are still WAYmore clues that point towards that market than towards china laboratory.
It's like you were saying that unicorns exist but that we didn't found them yet. It doesn't work like that. YOUhave to bring clues pointing towards your argument. We don't have to bring counter-arguments until you have brought those clues.
China would have to let inspectors into the lab to verify whether or not it came from there, now wouldn't they? Which they're not about doing.

Besides, I was simply pointing that a bio-weapon doesn't have to be deadly to be effective. Or didn't you read that part?

Conversely, are you claiming that the Chinese intelligence and military communities are to stupid to have concocted that plot, to take it from the lab and plant it at the market?

Defensive much?
 
China would have to let inspectors into the lab to verify whether or not it came from there, now wouldn't they? Which they're not about doing.

No they don't, as I explained why.

Besides, I was simply pointing that a bio-weapon doesn't have to be deadly to be effective.

This is not an argument of any kind.

are you claiming that the Chinese intelligence and military communities are to stupid to have concocted that plot, to take it from the lab and plant it at the market?

Did you understand what I said ? Cause I'm starting to belive that you don't or that you rather ignore the facts and go on with your theory.
 
No they don't, as I explained why.
Could it be because they have something to hide? Occam's razor attaches there too.
Did you understand what I said ? Cause I'm starting to belive that you don't or that you rather ignore the facts and go on with your theory.
I choose not to dismiss any possibility.

I believe that to a certain extent, "there;'s no such thing as coincidence". So, the proximity of the lab and the market, might not be a, "coincidence", either.

I also sense that you;re acting as a representative of the Chinese government. Or at least there's a strong possibility of that. It's the whole, "cheer for the home team" narrative, that is so off putting..

Evidence, (or presumption, if that sits better with you), of that, would be the fact you've just joined Techspot, and all 7 of your posts have been to this thread, in defense of China.

And yes I have read scientist's reports that this couldn't be an engineered virus. But, that might only be true, to the extent of their present knowledge.

Obviously, this could be a zoonotic disease. But there I've read that those type of viruses are often quite lethal. Rabies and anthrax follow that result.
This particular strain, doesn't seem to follow that trend.

Then too, you can't give your cat "the common cold".(Another corona virus) Their "colds" are induced by a variant of the herpes virus.

BTW before and during Trump's election, (I voted for him), I stated I did it because I wanted to see if he could get himself impeached. And look how that turned out
 
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Could it be because they have something to hide? Occam's razor attaches there too.
No it doesn't work like that. Look for the definition if you don't understand it.

I believe
I also sense
That's the main issue here. You are basing yourself on your emotion and on what you think rather than facts.

But, that might only be true, to the extent of their present knowledge
But as long as we don't have anything that corroborate this affirmation, it is exactly what happened.

I've read that those type of viruses are often quite lethal.
This particular strain, doesn't seem to follow that trend.
Well it does. The covid-19 has the exact same properties than other sras diseases, death rate included (link to the wiki page about sras).

Then too, you can't give your cat "the common cold".(Another corona virus) Their "colds" are induced by a variant of the herpes virus.
I don't get what you mean here.

BTW before and during Trump's election, (I voted for him), I stated I did it because I wanted to see if he could get himself impeached. And look how that turned out
I don't get how this is relevant here.
 
No it doesn't work like that. Look for the definition if you don't understand it.
You choose Not to understand it.

From where I stand, you have something to do with the Chinese government. Whether that is as an a agent, an operative, or an ordinary citizen, I obviously can't know for sure.

As I said in my last post, this thread appears your only interest in this site. And I'm quoting your post #8 on the topic.

That's the main issue here. You are basing yourself on your emotion and on what you think rather than facts.
No, I'm keeping an open mind to a couple of possibilities.
But as long as we don't have anything that corroborate this affirmation, it is exactly what happened.
Well, no. An unproven truth is usually defined as a "theory". For example, it took over two millennia, for schools to begin teaching the "Pythagorean Theorum", as the "Pythagorean Rule"

Well it does. The covid-19 has the exact same properties than other sras diseases, death rate included (link to the wiki page about sras).
Yes, and it's a link I followed.

First of,the Covid disease being discussed is SARS, not "sra", (Acronyms are always capitalized). But more importantly, it also surfaced in Yuunan Province in China. Then Chinese scientists traced it to bats, via civets. As you should be able to tell, if you watch our president's press briefings, it's obvious he is controlling what medical experts say. This is because Mr. Trump notoriously has an aversion to telling the full truth. I simply can't imagine that the Chinese government is any more transparent in that regard.

I don't get what you mean here.
I meant that diseases jumping from species to species, do occur, but are more rare than intra-species transmission..

The most interesting fact of both the SARS outbreak, and the Covid19 outbreak outbreak is this; Yuunan Province seems to be a "disease factory" of sorts, while also containing a "disease factory" I've scuttled it from my travel plans entirely.

I don't get how this is relevant here.
Simply that certain outcomes are both predictable, if not even inevitable.
 
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