Tiny Changes Let False Claims About COVID-19, Voting Evade Facebook Fact Checks

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Facebook labels posts that its fact checkers have found false, as in the screenshot on the left. On the right, a similar post had no label applied.

Screeenshot via Avaaz

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Screeenshot via Avaaz

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A screenshot of Facebook post about how President Trump came down with COVID-19 that was labeled «false information. At the bottom there is a link to a news article that fact checks the false information in the social media post.

Screenshot via Avaaz

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Screenshot via Avaaz

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Facebook posts that were able to avoid the «false information label.

Screenshots via Avaaz

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Screenshots via Avaaz

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Facebook labeled this post as containing «partly false information.

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Screenshot via Avaaz

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Similar posts that Facebook did not label «partially false information.

Screenshots via Avaaz

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Screenshots via Avaaz

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It appears as though there are orchestrated efforts to spread many of these falsehoods. Avaaz identified 119 pages upon which misinformation had been posted at least three times in the last year. Of those, 46 pages had shared unlabeled versions of posts the fact-checkers had deemed false.

Quran said the company may not be catching all these repeat offenders if it is not consistently labeling fact-checked content.

«Once they see a piece of misinformation that is hitting a nerve in the U.S. and going viral, even when it’s flagged by Facebook, these pages will take it, flip it, edit it a little bit and then circumvent Facebook’s system, Quran said. «[They] continue to build up their network and reach more and more people and amplify these lies, without being stopped by the platform.

Editor’s note: Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters.