Websites spreading misinformation about health attracted nearly half a billion views on Facebook in April alone, as the coronavirus pandemic escalated worldwide, a report has found.
Facebook had promised to crack down on conspiracy theories and inaccurate news early in the pandemic. But as its executives promised accountability, its algorithm appears to have fuelled traffic to a network of sites sharing dangerous false news, campaign group Avaaz has found.
False medical information can be deadly; researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine have directly linked a single piece of false information to 800 coronavirus deaths.
Pages from the top 10 sites peddling inaccurate information and conspiracy theories about health received almost four times as many views on Facebook as the top 10 reputable sites for health information, Avaaz warned in a report.
The report focused on Facebook pages and websites that shared large numbers of false claims about coronavirus. The pages and sites covered a variety of different backgrounds, including alternative medicine, organic farming, far-right politics and generalised conspiracies.
It found that global networks of 82 sites spreading health misinformation over at least five countries had generated an estimated 3.8bn views on Facebook over the last year. Their audience peaked in April, with 460m views in a single month.
“This suggests that just when citizens needed credible health information the most, and while Facebook was trying to proactively raise the profile of authoritative health institutions on the platform, its algorithm was potentially undermining these efforts,” the report said.
A relatively small but influential network is responsible for driving huge amounts of traffic to health misinformation sites. Avaaz identified 42 “super-spreader” sites that had 28m followers generating an estimated 800m views.
A single article, which falsely claimed that the American Medical Association was encouraging doctors and hospitals to over-estimate deaths from Covid-19, was seen 160m times.
This vast collective reach suggested that Facebook’s own internal systems are not capable of protecting users from misinformation about health, even at a critical time when the company has promised to keep users “safe and informed”.