After facing widespread criticism, Facebook has filed a transparency report which it initially published on the most popular publications of its public information channel in the US during the first quarter of 2021. The report provides an insight into the extent to which the dissemination of information on the covid-19 vaccine has been extended online.
According to the first report from the New York Times, which he published an exposed bomb on Friday, after getting a copy of the unpublished report, the most viewed link on Facebook between January and March was an updated article since then that suggested the vaccine could be to blame for the death of a Florida doctor. The link was almost completed 54 millions of views during this period.
According to the Facebook report, among the 20 most visited pages of the platform during the first quarter was the Epoch Times, a site that routinely pushes misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic and far-right conspiracies such as QAnon.
On Saturday, Facebook’s director of policy communications, Andy Stone he tweeted that Facebook’s criticism for initially maintaining the report “was not unfair,” but added that defining misinformation is a complex process:
“The media wrote about the South Florida doctor who died. When the coroner released a cause of death, the Chicago Tribune added an update to its original story; NYTimes no. It would have been nice to remove the Times story because it was COVID [misinformation]? Of course not. Actually no one suggests it to me either. But that illustrates how difficult it is to define misinformation. ”
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Stone said Facebook did not publish the report before because there were “key solutions to the system” the company wanted to do. He did not go into further detail about what exactly these changes were, but he did post a link in the report on Twitter. In a statement a the Washington Post, said a change involved correcting a technical error, but declined to delve into it.
Turned on Twitter, Stone noted “slight differences” between this filed report and the second quarter report Facebook did public release earlier this week, adding that Facebook expects to see even more progress in the third quarter. Facebook released its Q2 report on August 18 showing the most popular posts in the United States from April to June, which paints the company in a more favorable light. The Epoch Times still appears, its subscription page is among the top 10 most viewed links, but most high-performing posts include memes, recipes, exciting animal stories, and for some reason, CBD and Christianity product showcases. – themed clothes.
However, anything that makes the “key corrections” that Facebook made between the two reports is not immediate. Comparing them side by side, their formats are almost identical. Facebook uses different word options to explain its findings, but its presentation of the data itself does not change. Facebook did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment.
It seems that the only reason this first report has even seen the light is due to Facebook’s reaction that was slapped on the back for its transparency with the second report, while burying a data set. which made him look bad. To that end, Facebook Vice President Guy Rosen declared the social network as “the most transparent platform on the Internet” in a statement to the mail earlier this week.
“We are guilty of cleaning our house a little before we invite the company,” Stone wrote on Twitter. “We have been criticized for that; Again, this is not unfair … given the interest in the first version of the report that we did not publish, we have decided to make it public. It doesn’t shine, but we try to move forward. “