Meta Reverses Its COVID-19 Misinformation Regulations in the United States

According to The Washington Post, Meta is reversing its covid misinformation rules in countries like the US. This decision is in line with the recommendation made by Meta’s independent oversight board in April of this year. The change comes as the pandemic’s national emergency status has been rescinded. (Source: The Washington Post)

Meta recently provided an update regarding its request to the Meta Oversight Board to investigate the safety of rolling back covid misinformation rules. The reason for this change is the end of the global public health emergency declaration by the World Health Organization. Meta stated, “Our Covid-19 misinformation rules will no longer be in effect globally as the global public health emergency declaration that triggered those rules has been lifted.” (Source: Meta)

Moving forward, Meta will be tailoring its rules by region. As the WHO has downgraded the pandemic’s emergency status, Meta will not directly address some of the concerns raised by the Oversight Board. These concerns include reevaluating what misinformation is removed and increasing transparency about government requests to remove covid content. Instead, Meta’s response to the recommendation to create a process for determining the risk of its misinformation moderation policies will address the spirit of the first recommendation. Meta plans to consult both internal and external experts to assess the global status of Covid-19 and will provide details about localized enforcement in future updates. (Source: Meta)

The global emergency declaration by the WHO ended on May 5th, 2023. Twitter had already stopped enforcing its own misinformation rules six months prior, after being purchased by Elon Musk in November 2022. TikTok and YouTube, on the other hand, continue to maintain policies regarding covid misinformation, with YouTube recently making changes to its rules about election misinformation.

 

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Denial of responsibility! TechCodex is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.