This appeared last week.
Facebook removes posts as coronavirus misinformation spreads on social media
Targets conspiracy theories and false claims.
Facebook said it will take down misinformation about China's fast-spreading coronavirus, in a rare departure from its usual approach to dubious health content that is presenting a fresh challenge for social media companies.
The coronavirus outbreak has stoked a wave of anti-China sentiment around the globe. Hoaxes have spread widely online, promoted by conspiracy theorists and exacerbated by a dearth of information from the cordoned-off zone around China's central city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began.
Nearly 12,000 people have been infected in China, according to local health authorities, and more than 130 cases reported in at least 25 other countries and regions.
Facebook said in a blog post that it would remove content about the virus "with false claims or conspiracy theories that have been flagged by leading global health organizations [sic] and local health authorities," saying such content would violate its ban on misinformation leading to "physical harm."
The move is unusually aggressive for the world's biggest social network, which generally limits the distribution of content containing health misinformation to its 2.9 billion monthly users through restrictions on search results and advertising, but allows the original posts to stay up.
It also puts it at odds with other major US-based social networks. YouTube, which has 2 billion monthly users and Twitter and Reddit, which have hundreds of millions of users, confirmed they do not consider inaccurate information about health to be a violation of their policies.
Those companies, like Facebook in other cases, rely on techniques such as elevating medical information from authoritative public health sources and warning users about content that has been debunked.
TikTok, owned by China's Bytedance, and Pinterest do ban health misinformation and are actively removing false coronavirus content, they told Reuters.
Much more here:
To me there are 2 aspects to this.
The first is to wonder why anyone would want to distribute fake / distorted / injurious information. They must be pretty sick.
If you want quality current information you can go here:
and here:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (both very accurate and timely)
and here:
https://www.healthmap.org/ncov2019/ (figures a little slower)
The second is why the social media platforms would not be ruthless in removing false information. To not do would seem to be non-sensical but there you go.
I am afraid, as I type I do not have a good feeling about how this will all turn out. See this for example:
An American sneeze now a Chinese virus: Australia's economic contagion
By Shane Wright
February 7, 2020 — 5.43pm
The old economic rule of thumb was simple: when the US sneezed, Australia caught a cold.
It was an explanation of Australia's dependence, along with the rest of the developed world, on the American economy and its millions of well-paid consumers. But what happens when Australia's largest trading partner, China, shuts down key parts of its economy because of an outbreak of the coronavirus?
When China was hit by SARS in 2003, Australian iron ore exports to the country were worth just $1.7 billion. By 2018, they had reached $51.4 billion
In the past 24 hours companies as different as Toyota and Nintendo have warned of an economic fallout from the virus, which is forcing firms to shutter operations on mainland China with flow-on impacts to its suppliers.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe, in evidence to a House of Representatives committee on Friday, noted there were already signs that local businesses would be affected as they struggled to replenish their inventories from Chinese warehouses and factory floors.
The RBA, along with many private-sector economists and the federal Treasury, have looked at the impact of the SARS outbreak of 2003 on China and Australia to try to get an idea of what the coronavirus impact may mean to the local economy.
That disease scare trimmed Australian GDP by just 0.07 per cent. That number, however, was over a full year. Its initial impact was larger, closer to 0.2 per cent, before there was a quick recovery as China maintained its drive to elevate tens of millions of people out of poverty.
The Australia-China economic links of 2003, however, are far different and much deeper.
Lots more here:
This is not good at all and we all must hope the epidemic peaks ‘real soon now’
David.
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