Facebook and Instagram have removed more than 20 million posts containing false information about the Corona virus pandemic since the announcement of the epidemic until last June, according to the site "Cent" accused of technology news.
"When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, things are evolving more quickly, so it makes it more difficult to identify and measure the spread," Jay Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, said during a press conference.
The action came about a month after the White House announced that about 12 people were responsible for creating 65% of misinformation about the vaccine on social media platforms, and that all of them remained active on the social networking giant.
Despite taking action against these people, the American continued to criticize Facebook's response to misinformation, and in this regard, the White House spokesman said in statements to CNN on Wednesday, "In the midst of the pandemic, honesty and transparency about the work that must be done to protect health public is very vital.”
"But Facebook still refuses to be clear about the amount of misinformation that is being actively circulated and promoted," he added, without a response from Facebook to any comment on these statements so far.
Many political elites, including US President Joe Biden, have criticized social networks for failing to effectively combat the spread of COVID-19 and misinformation about vaccines.
Facebook said it had more than 65 criteria for false claims about the coronavirus and vaccines that would prompt it to remove posts from its platforms.
The company recently added to this list false claims that vaccines cause Alzheimer's disease and that being around vaccinated people may cause secondary side effects to others.
The social network pointed out that it had removed more than 3,000 accounts, pages and groups for violating these standards, stressing that it had subjected more than 190 million posts related to Covid-19 to scrutiny after third-party partners that checked the facts classified them as false or incomplete.
Facebook, which has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland in a survey on the coronavirus pandemic, has warned that hesitation about using the vaccine in the United States on Facebook has decreased by 50%. Noting that vaccination uptake increased by 35% in France, 25% in Indonesia and 20% in Nigeria.