At least until June 2021, Facebook had significant gaps in its efforts to tackle COVID-19 misinformation from one of the most prominent anti-vaccine groups in the world, according to a study from ISD Global, a U.K.-based think tank that studies polarization, extremism and misinformation.
During the first year of the pandemic, Facebook pages associated with the World Doctors Alliance -- an anti-vaccine group whose members regularly post false information about COVID-19 -- ballooned in popularity, according to ISD Global, despite consistent breaches of Facebook's own COVID-19 and vaccine policies. The group's primary page was removed from the platform in July 2021.
"The World Doctors Alliance is a collective of pseudo-science influencers … that hijacked the pandemic to build up a significant audience online in a multitude of languages in multiple continents," Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a digital investigations consultancy firm, told ABC News.
On its website, the WDA lists 12 key members from seven different countries, a number of whom have become leading voices within the COVID-denier and vaccine-skeptic movements.
The ISD Global study also says that Facebook failed to implement its own policies "at a very basic level."
For example, the report outlines some of the false claims from members of the WDA group that were allowed on Facebook, from claims that the COVID-19 virus does not exist, to others acknowledging its existence but downplaying its severity.
The report also...
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