Zuckerberg says Facebook removed 18 million posts with COVID misinformation

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social media giant has removed 18 million posts containing misinformation about COVID-19 but would not say how many times the posts had been viewed or shared, Report informs referring to CBS.

“If we see harmful misinformation on the platform, then we take it down. It’s against our policy,” Zuckerberg told ‘CBS This Morning’ co-host Gayle King in an exclusive interview.

“But do we catch everything? Of course, there are mistakes that we make or areas where we need to improve. But that’s the best number that we have in terms of what we’ve seen and what our systems have been able to detect,” he said.

King noted that the figure only refers to the number of posts, not how many people saw or spread the misinformation.

Facebook, as well as other platforms, has faced intense criticism for the spread of misinformation, especially regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

President Biden said last month that Facebook and other social media platforms were ‘killing people’ by enabling the spread of COVID-19 misinformation but later clarified that he meant the misinformation itself was causing deaths.

“They’re killing people. I mean it, really. Look, The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they’re killing people,” he said.

Facebook responded to Mr. Biden’s comments, saying the company has actually helped increase vaccine acceptance.