As social media companies promise to crack down on Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine, studies show they continue to fall short, allowing disproven narratives to reach millions.
Facebook failed to label 80% of articles on its platform promoting a fast-spreading conspiracy theory that the US is funding the use of bioweapons in Ukraine, according to a study released Friday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
The nonprofit disinformation research group studied a sample of posts from between 24 February and 14 March sharing external articles containing baseless claims about bioweapons. It found Facebook in 80% of cases failed to label posts as either “missing context”, containing “partly false information” or “false information” outright.
“If our researchers can identify false information about Ukraine openly circulating on its platform, it is within Meta’s capability to do the same,” said CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed. “But we found that in the vast majority of cases, conspiracy theories are given a free pass.”
The bioweapons theory began to spread in the early days of the war on Ukraine, among fringe QAnon accounts, ultimately making its way to larger platforms such as Fox News. The White House has condemned the myth, saying it may have been manufactured by Moscow to justify a possible use of chemical weapons against Ukraine.
But it continues to spread across social media, including Facebook.
CCDH researchers used the social analytics tool...
Turkish base fake news in Armenia For several days, a video has been circulating on social media claiming that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan allegedly signed a “secret agreement” with EU ...