Body Bags Say ‘Disinfo Kills’ Outside Facebook Office

• Activists crammed the sidewalk outdoors Fb’s D.C. workplace with physique baggage studying “disinfo kills.”
• The Actual Fb Oversight Board, a gaggle of specialists and civil rights leaders, organized it.
• The group is looking on Fb to take additional motion about disinformation on its platform.
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Activists positioned physique baggage that learn “disinfo kills” outdoors Fb’s workplaces in Washington, D.C., to encourage the platform to take additional motion towards COVID-19 disinformation superspreaders. 

The occasion was organized by a gaggle known as the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a coalition of lecturers, specialists, and civil rights leaders initially introduced collectively to quickly reply to considerations about Fb and the presidential election. 

President Biden beforehand stated that Facebook was “killing people” with false COVID-19 information however later clarified that he was referring to superspreaders of that disinformation on the platform. He appeared to be referencing a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which recognized a “disinformation dozen” — 12 people that the report discovered have been accountable for 73% of the anti-vaccine content material on Fb. 

In a press release Wednesday, a Fb spokesperson informed Insider that it “completely [bans] Pages, Teams, and accounts that repeatedly break our guidelines on COVID misinformation,” together with over a dozen such pages, teams, and accounts from the people recognized within the report.

The protest motion Wednesday was accompanied by the group’s second-quarter “Facebook Quarterly Harms Report,” which issued two main calls for: that Fb disables put up engagement on “confirmed disinformation superspreaders” and that the platform “uprank high quality information sources by reprioritizing reputability within the information algorithm.”

Fb beforehand prioritized authoritative information sources like NPR, CNN, and The New York Occasions within the aftermath of the 2020 United States election, however later rolled again the change, The New York Times reported.

—The Actual Fb Oversight Board (@FBoversight) July 28, 2021

Photographs from the occasion present two rows of physique baggage specified by entrance of Fb’s Washington, D.C. workplace, with pictures posted by The Actual Fb Oversight Board displaying protesters holding indicators that bear a Fb brand and the phrases “disinformation kills.” 

One other photograph from Reuters exhibits a pedestrian strolling by means of the protest.

The protest and launch of the “Fb Quarterly Harms Report” coincide with Facebook’s Q2 earnings call, which is ready to happen on Wednesday afternoon.

The report discovered that over 83% of primary posts on Fb in Q2 — citing CrowdTangle data compiled by New York Occasions reporter Kevin Roose on the Twitter account Facebook’s Top 10 — originated from “5 identified disinformation superspreaders” together with Ben Shapiro and Sean Hannity. 

Facebook said in a newsroom post and in addition in a press release to Insider on Wednesday that it has eliminated greater than 18 million items of content material on Fb and Instagram that violate its politics on COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation. It additionally stated that it has labeled and diminished the visibility of over 167 million items of COVID-19 content material which have been debunked by fact-checkers. 

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