Since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, we have had the need to understand and filter information that was routinely presented about Covid-19, including a significant amount of false news that stimulated the exponential increase in contaminated people and deaths.
In addition to the personal filter, social platforms were also invited to collaborate with the fight, which meant, for example, in Meta’s social networks, the identification of publications as false information, the presentation of reliable links that refuted the supposed information provided and a reduction in the account reach.
However, with the announcement by the WHO that Covid-19 is no longer considered a global health emergency, we began to see the “return to normality” movement, with the loosening of rules and moderation along the lines of what we saw in the “pre-pandemic era”.
One of the examples of this change is Meta (the company that is responsible for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp), which announced the reversal of its policies to combat misinformation, using the WHO decision as a basis.
Our Covid-19 disinformation rules will no longer be in effect globally, as the global public health emergency declaration that triggered these rules has been lifted.
According to information disclosed in the transparency center, the decision will be regionalized (that is, it is not a uniform and global deactivation), with consultation with internal and external specialists to assess the status of covid in the world, with sharing of details of the application of the rules in quarterly updates.
With that, Meta joins Twitter in the position of loosening the rules to combat disinformation on its platform, while TikTok and YouTube continue to maintain the fight (at least for now).
