Facebook alters virus policy after damning misinformation report

Users who have read, watched or shared false coronavirus content will receive a pop-up alert urging them to go the World Health Organisation's website.

A study had indicated Facebook was frequently failing to clamp down on false posts, particularly when they were in languages other than English.

Facebook said the research did not reflect the work it had done recently.

The California tech firm says it will start showing the messages at the top of news feeds "in the coming weeks".

A Facebook spokesman said the move will "connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources, in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook".

The changes have been prompted by a major study of misinformation on the platform across six languages by Avaaz, a crowdfunded activist group.

Researchers say millions of Facebook users continue to be exposed to coronavirus misinformation, without any warning on the platform.

The group found some of the most dangerous falsehoods had received hundreds of thousands of views, including claims like "black people are resistant to coronavirus" and "Coronavirus is destroyed by chlorine dioxide".

Avaaz researchers analysed a sample of more than 100 pieces of Facebook coronavirus misinformation on the website's English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian and French versions.