Facebook will now warn users if they interacted with fake news and hoaxes surrounding the Coronavirus on the popular social media platform. 

There have been instances where the website has seen dangerous and inaccurate information floating around on the internet and the company will now be taking aggressive efforts to contain misinformation. 

© Facebook

A new notice will be sent to users who either clicked, reacted or commented on posts that contained harmful misinformation about COVID-19. 

The misinformation will be removed from the social media website by moderatos and an alert will also appear on the website that will direct users to the World Health Organisation knowledge base. 

âThrough this crisis, one of my top priorities is making sure that you see accurate and authoritative information across all of our apps,â Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page Thursday.

Facebook will also start promoting stories that have accurate COVID-19 information from a dedicated information centre called âGet The Facts.â These stories will have trustworthy information and usually articles that debunk fake news surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. 

© Unsplash - Tim Bennett

Facebook has already flagged 40 million posts based on 4,000 articles that contained misinformation about the pandemic. The 4,000 articles were reviewed by independent fact-checkers on its platform globally. These posts carried warning labels and 95% of Facebook users avoided to click on these stories. 

Having said that, some experts have pointed out that it sometimes takes Facebook 22 days to label misinformation which gives it plenty of time to spread on its platform. 

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