"Israel Today" and Facebook will fight the lies about the vaccines • Every day, the newspaper's reporters will refute with the help of the experts the common false claims regarding the vaccine for Corona
The corona plague has been with us for a year, and with it the Pike News about the virus, such as claims that the virus has been engineered or that the mortality data are lower than the reported data.
With the advent of vaccines, these statements have a heavier weight - when people who are exposed to false information shy away from vaccines, refuse to be vaccinated and thus risk being infected and infected by those around them, to the point of life-threatening.
In order to continue to fight the false information and support the national vaccination efforts, we launched "Israel Today" in collaboration with Facebook, in a special project in which we collected the ten most common false claims on the Internet in Israel regarding the epidemic and vaccines.
Each false claim will be accompanied by reliable facts that refute it from a variety of experts.
16 million contents removed
The campaign is designed to encourage the public not to believe Pike News, and instead to equip it with reliable information about the vaccine.
The ambition is to dispel false rumors and create a sense of security among those from the public who are still afraid to go and get vaccinated.
Since the start of the epidemic about a year ago in March, 2020, more than 16 million content has been removed from the social network from Facebook and Instagram worldwide for violations of the Corona virus-related misinformation policy.
Objective: Accessibility of content
In an interview with Israel Today, Jordana Cutler, Israel's Director of Israel and the Diaspora, talks about the year in which the social network was required to fight the spread of false information.
“If I look back a year, we have done a great deal of work in the entire field of the corona, with the support of the factors here in the country and around the world.
"In the first closure, we initiated a project with the ARN organization, when there were many concerns about mental health and we wanted to refer people who feel lonely for help," said Cutler. "We also worked with MDA, who were unable to handle all referrals. For corona testing sites and blood donations.
"We still need to increase awareness. It is important for us to make all the content around the vaccine and the virus accessible - both in Hebrew and Arabic. The idea was created as part of the desire to collaborate with media outlets, which are considered a source of reliable information." In order to bring the information on the most conspiratorial issues surrounding the vaccine. "
Information from officials
"In every country the issues are very different," Cutler adds.
"We need to adapt everywhere, but we still need to increase the awareness of those who do not want to be vaccinated or are afraid of vaccines, to increase awareness of all the information and discourse around it - even of those who are afraid to send their children to school."
According to Cutler, almost immediately after the vaccinations were approved, Facebook announced that it would begin removing disinformation from the platforms that relates to the vaccines and had been refuted by public health experts.
"We have fact-checkers in every language - both Hebrew and Arabic. If we receive reports, it goes out to two external bodies that check the information, and they can also search for content independently.
"We can not tell them what to check and what answers to get. They have contact with local sources, such as the Ministry of Health. In case this is a life - threatening post, we can address it in our own ways," Cutler emphasizes.
"If we find a profile with a lot of policy violations that continues to open new profiles - it also violates our terms of use," Cutler explains, after Facebook recently closed groups that spread false information around the virus as users flocked to new groups.
"Of course there's a cat and mouse game here, and we're constantly trying to find new ways to combat this phenomenon. But thanks to artificial intelligence we can close millions of fictitious profiles every quarter, and we also rely on media reports - the information journalists have is very important to us. And also from each user - whether they are a thousand reports or one report, we will check the content and the profile. "
And what is the most popular Pike News that Facebook has to deal with?
"It's not exactly a recommendation to drink bleach," Cutler says with a grin.
"Most of the content deals with the fact that Israel is a large global experimental laboratory for vaccines, that Corona is less dangerous than the flu or that you do not have to wear masks. We gathered the information from research and conversations with people."
