{"id":38000,"date":"2020-03-19T11:42:35","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T03:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=38000"},"modified":"2020-03-19T11:44:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T03:44:26","slug":"major-social-media-companies-issue-joint-statement-on-covid-19-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2020\/03\/19\/major-social-media-companies-issue-joint-statement-on-covid-19-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Major social media companies issue joint statement on Covid-19 misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>To reassure customers and flag the potential for misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, major social media companies and their parent corporations issued a joint statement on their efforts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Together with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Facebook?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Google?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Google<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LinkedIn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@LinkedIn<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Microsoft?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Microsoft<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Twitter?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/YouTube?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@YouTube<\/a>, we are committed to keeping our communities informed. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Ka7iq75VIE\">pic.twitter.com\/Ka7iq75VIE<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Reddit (@reddit) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reddit\/status\/1239703084110098434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 17, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe,\u201d read the statement signed by Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The World Health Organization said that disinformation is as dangerous as COVID-19. During an address at the Munich Security conference on Feb. 15, Un director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: \u201cWe\u2019re not just fighting an epidemic; we\u2019re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But tech companies aren\u2019t just battling the spread of fake news, but also have to contend with misleading information in several pronouncements of government officials &#8211; e.g. in the US, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/coronavirus-covid-19\/why-cant-mainstream-media-stop-echoing-trumps-coronavirus-misinformation\">President Donald Trump\u2019s public statements on COVID-19, including his tweets and Facebook posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The statement does not go into details how the effort\/s will be done; but per company, moves have already been made to monitor Covid-19-related information online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TwitterSafety\/status\/1239706602594136064\">shared the company\u2019s update<\/a>\u00a0to its strategy for monitoring tweets during the outbreak, including \u201creviewing the Twitter rules in the context of COVID-19 and considering the ways in which they may need to evolve to account for new account behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google\u00a0\u00a0CEO Sundar Pichai\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/inside-google\/company-announcements\/covid-19-how-were-continuing-to-help\/\">published two blog posts on this topic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, Facebook\u2019s\u00a0efforts to fight disinformation\u00a0include redirecting to sources like the World Health Organization or local health authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To reassure customers and flag the potential for misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, major social media companies and their parent corporations issued a joint statement on their efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":38001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[441,5230,6498,337,6151,508,698],"class_list":["post-38000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight","tag-facebook","tag-fake-news","tag-good-tech","tag-google","tag-high-tech","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}