Since the coronavirus outbreak, social networking giant Facebook has been lending a helping hand in preventing the news reports that make their way in to the timeline that promote wrong information. The social network blocks the news articles that give out false and unofficial information about coronavirus. However, Facebook is now facing a bug which is wrongly blocking the news articles about the virus which are actually genuine.
Many of the users of the social network complained that the news articles from the news organizations were flagged for violating the community guidelines of the firm. The news sites that were affected include The Atlantic, BBC and The Independent. Such issues were also seen among the users of Instagram which is also owned by the social networking giant Facebook. The social network has explained that there is a bug in its anti-spam system that has by mistake identified the content as problematic.
Vice President of Integrity at Facebook Guy Rosen said that they have brought back all the posts that were initially wrongly identified as incorrect and removed. It included all the posts and not just the ones that were on COVID-19. Rosen added that there was an issue with the automated system which removed the links to the abusive websites but had by mistake removed many other posts as well. The social network recently made an announcement that it had deployed some home contract workers who will be responsible to moderate the content over the topics about the coronavirus outbreak.
It has also clarified that Facebook depends on a combination of Artificial Intelligence and human moderators to review its content. The company in a blog post added that in the past few years they have invested a lot which has made it possible for them to be prepared for such a situation. The giant recently joined hands with the coalition of technology firms who remain committed to protecting and informing people about the ongoing virus outbreak.
Photo Credits: Tech Crunch
