Image: Courtesy Pixabay
Facebook Inc. announced it was making significant changes to its algorithms to reduce posts on sensational medical or health-related claims after an investigation found that the social media giant and YouTube were being flooded with content that contained scientifically dubious and potentially harmful information on alternative cancer treatments.
“In order to help people get accurate health information and the support they need, it’s imperative that we minimize health content that is sensational or misleading.” the Facebook product manager Travis Yeh said in his blog post.
An investigation carried out by Business Insider revealed that hundreds of videos that promote bleach as a cure for autism were found on YouTube. Bleach promoted as a miracle cure had reportedly caused many fatalities. YouTube immediately removed the videos after the report was published,
Facebook made this important announcement in Tuesday’s blog post in response to a Wall Street Journal’s investigation. The Journal found that sometimes widespread misinformation appeared for proven treatments alongside advertisements, videos, or pages.
In a post on Tuesday, Facebook said it made two significant changes to its ranking algorithms last month to reduce posts with exaggerated or sensational health claims about miracle cures and trying to promote a product or service based on a health-related claim such as promoting a medication or pill claiming to help in weight loss.
The company said it is doing this in a manner similar to how it handled low-quality content previously: by identifying phrases that were commonly used in these posts to predict which posts might include sensational health claims or promotion of products with health-related claims and then showing these lower in News Feed.
Posts with sensational health claims or solicitation using health-related claims will have reduced distribution, the blog post said. The Facebook update, however, does not state how it plans to stop the groups from posting such information.
Facebook has been working aggressively on combating misinformation through a combination of technology and human review.
Sign up for the QuackTrack.org newsletter below!
