Fact-Checking Facebook’s Latest Disinformation Campaign

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, responds to Facebook statements regarding COVID-19 misinformation, including a blog post by a Facebook executive that questioned his organization's report, The Disinformation Dozen.

Today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a disastrous interview to CBS This Morning’s Gayle King, in which he refused to answer King’s question about the number of people exposed to or sharing misinformation.

“One of the things that the White House has asked for repeatedly and still hasn’t gotten a number, is how much misinformation people have viewed and shared,” stated King. “Do you have that number?” she asked.

“Well, if we see harmful misinformation on the platform, we take it down, it’s against our policy,” replied Zuckerberg. He went on to claim they have taken down 18 million pieces of violating content.

When King pushed Zuckerberg for the specific number of people who have been exposed to COVID-19 misinformation on the platform, Zuckerberg dodged again, pointing instead to the number of people that have used the company’s COVID-19 information tools about vaccines and the virus. There is no reason Zuckerberg should not be able to answer this question, though we now know executives at the company refused to support a project aimed at getting it.

Perhaps realizing this was a PR nightmare, Facebook published blog post by Monika Bickert, vice president of content policy, seeking to rebut a report produced by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, The Disinformation Dozen: Why platforms must act on twelve leading online anti-vaxxers. She said the report was responsible for a “faulty narrative.” In this instance, faulty appears to be a synonym for “deeply embarrassing to Facebook.”

These media hits are only the latest installment of the company’s continual refusal to take responsibility for the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. It’s the classic Facebook playbook: deny, deflect, and delay blame.

We are committed to disrupting disinformation wherever we find it. So here is our response to Zuckerberg’s interview and Bickert’s post.

From Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on CBS This Morning:

Deny: Mark Zuckerberg told CBS This Morning, “If we see harmful misinformation on the platform, then we take it down. It’s against our policy.”

Fact check: Facebook and Instagram routinely fail to act on vaccine misinformation. An audit of their action against Covid and vaccine misinformation conducted by CCDH earlier this year in partnership with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shows that they fail to act on 82% of posts reported to them by users using their own reporting tools.

From Facebook’s blogpost by Monika Bickert:

Deflect: "In recent weeks, there has been a debate over whether the global problem of COVID-19 misinformation can be solved by simply removing 12 people from social media platforms."

Fact check: This oversimplification attempts to distract from the indisputable fact that Facebook inconsistently enforces its stated terms of service around Covid misinformation. No-one has claimed the whole problem can be solved by removing the 12 biggest superspreaders. But it is clear to all that Facebook has failed to act quickly and consistently against the superspreaders of vaccine disinformation, and that this has real-word consequences.

Deny: “People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim.”

Fact check: This claim is evidenced by analysis of content posted or shared to Facebook over 689,000 times between February and March 2020 according to Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool. It is no surprise that Facebook is widely reported to be considering the closure of its CrowdTangle tool, which would prevent similar analysis from being conducted in future.

Content featured in the analysis was manually checked to establish whether it contained a member of the Disinformation Dozen or originated from a website controlled by or related to one of those members. In total, 73% of this content was found to originate with the Disinformation Dozen.

Deflect: “Moreover, focusing on such a small group of people distracts from the complex challenges we all face in addressing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.”

Fact check: Our analysis shows that the Disinformation Dozen have a disproportionate role in the spread of vaccine misinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has failed to act on this problem, just as they have failed to act on the wider problem of vaccine misinformation.

Delay: “That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards…”

Fact check: Our report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel”, detailed 105 pieces of disinformation promoted by accounts belonging to the dozen in the 30 days after the Congressional hearing where our original research was brought to Mark Zuckerberg’s attention. Facebook has still failed to act on dozens of these accounts with 6.3 million followers in total.

Facebook and Instagram routinely fail to act on vaccine misinformation. An audit of their action against Covid and vaccine misinformation conducted by CCDH earlier this year in partnership with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shows that they fail to act on 82% of posts reported to them.

Deny: “...we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people…”

Fact check: The Disinformation Dozen still have 6.3 million followers across Facebook’s properties. Just one of the Dozen has been comprehensively deplatformed on Facebook and Instagram, while the rest are free to continue spreading disinformation.

Joseph Mercola, a notorious pandemic profiteer reportedly worth $100 million, remains active on both Facebook and Instagram, where he benefits from blue “verified” check marks and boasts a combined 3.2 million followers.

Facebook has failed to act on new accounts belonging to other Disinformation Dozen members. Disinformation Dozen member Erin Elizabeth recently joked about the phenomenon on Twitter. Another member, Rizza Islam, recently created a new Instagram account that has already amassed nearly 65,000 followers.

Deny: “...including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.”

Joseph Mercola, named by the New York Times as “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online”, has not had any of his accounts removed and still has access to 3.2 million followers across Facebook’s properties. The Disinformation Dozen as a whole still have access to dozens of accounts with 6.3 million followers across Facebook and Instagram.

Delay: “We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups, or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others.”

Fact check: These measures are either not in place or they are not working. In the last month alone, members of the Disinformation Dozen gained 91,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram. They have dozens of accounts with 6.3 million followers on these platforms.

In March, CCDH published a report revealing that Instagram’s algorithm was recommending posts containing Covid and vaccine misinformation. Instagram is still recommending this misinformation in its “Explore” feed today.

We would welcome more transparency from Facebook. How many people are still seeing disinformation posted by the Disinformation Dozen?

Delay: “We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.”

Fact check: These measures are either not in place or they are not working. Articles posted to Joseph Mercola’s website in just the last 48 hours received 3,261 Facebook interactions, according to the platform’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool. Articles posted to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s website in the last 48 hours have received 2,454 interactions according to the same tool.

Deflect: “The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.”

Fact check: Our report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel”, detailed 105 pieces of disinformation promoted by accounts belonging to the dozen in the 30 days after the Congressional hearing where our original research was brought to Mark Zuckerberg’s attention. They still have access to dozens of accounts with 6.3 million followers that are used to post disinformation.

Deflect: “In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”

Fact check: This figure says nothing about the disproportionate role of the Disinformation Dozen in spreading anti-vaccine content on its platform during the Covid pandemic. Facebook has not explained how it put together this sample of posts, leaving us to assume that it looks at all vaccine-related posts in every language ever, making it completely irrelevant to the challenges of the misinformation epidemic taking place on Facebook here and now.

In contrast to our own research, Facebook’s analysis ignores images, videos and URLs posted by ordinary users that feature content created by the Disinformation Dozen. The New York Times has highlighted how Joseph Mercola’s content is reposted by dozens of blogs in multiple languages, all of which would be ignored by Facebook’s analysis which focuses solely on Mercola’s own Facebook posts and shares of URLs from his personal website.

We would welcome more transparency from Facebook. They have still failed to answer a simple question: how many people have seen Covid vaccine misinformation on Facebook?

Deny: "The report upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users. They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook."

Fact check: Our report analyzed content posted or shared to Facebook over 689,000 times between February and March 2020 according to Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool. It is no surprise that Facebook is widely reported to be considering the closure of its CrowdTangle tool, which would prevent similar analysis from being conducted in future.

This framing is telling, as it chooses to broaden the discussion to all posts about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months. The research does not claim to analyze the totality of vaccine conversation, but specifically analyzes vaccine misinformation.

Facebook’s difficulty with categorizing types of vaccine conversation has resulted in reports of vaccine advocates experiencing some of the same “penalties” Facebook mentions imposing on misinformation and disinformation spreaders. Re-casting our data within a set of all COVID-19 vaccine conversations globally is comparing apples to oranges.

Facebook is again avoiding a simple question: how many people have seen Covid vaccine misinformation on Facebook? Without the answer to that question, the statistics it quotes are meaningless. We know that the Disinformation Dozen are still able to share vaccine disinformation with 6.3 million followers on Facebook and Instagram.

Deflect: “Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as “anti-vax” or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”

Fact check: Our sample consisted of content posted or shared to Facebook over 689,000 times between February and March 2021 according to Facebook’s own CrowdTangle analytics tool. It is no surprise that Facebook is widely reported to be considering the closure of its CrowdTangle tool, which would prevent similar analysis from being conducted in future.

The groups included in our analysis are dedicated to spreading vaccine misinformation and persuading people not to take life-saving vaccines, a problem that Facebook was repeatedly warned about ahead of the pandemic but that it has still failed to act on.

We would welcome more transparency from Facebook. They have still failed to answer a simple question: how many people have seen Covid vaccine misinformation on Facebook?