FACEBOOK ADDING LABELS TO VACCINE POSTS
Move intended to combat COVID-19 misinformation
Facebook is adding informational labels to posts about vaccines as it expands efforts to counter COVID-19-related misinformation flourishing on its platforms.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post Monday that labels will contain “credible information” about the vaccines from the World Health Organization. They will be in English and five other languages, with more languages added in coming weeks.
“For example, we’re adding a label on posts that discuss the safety of COVID-19 vaccines that notes COVID-19 vaccines go through tests for safety and effectiveness before they’re approved,” Zuckerberg said.
The social network is also adding a tool to help get users vaccinated by connecting them to information about where and when they can get their shot.
Facebook and Instagram have been criticized for allowing anti-vaccination propaganda to spread and for being woefully slow in weeding out the misinformation, often with factchecks, labels and other restrained measures.
“This announcement falls well short of what is needed to solve the crisis of anti-vaccine lies polluting social media users’ timelines,“said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, a critic of social media companies’ handling of hate speech and misinformation.
“Facebook and Instagram still do not remove the vast majority of posts reported to them for containing dangerous misinformation about vaccines . ... The main superspreaders of anti-vaccine lies all still have a presence on Instagram or Facebook, despite promises to remove them. And the evidence suggests that the way Facebook applies labels to misinformation posts has minimal impact.” For years, Facebook and other social platforms have allowed anti-vaccination propaganda to flourish, making it difficult to stamp out such sentiments now. And their efforts to weed out other types of COVID-19 misinformation — often with fact-checks, informational labels and other restrained measures, has been woefully slow.
The Associated Press recently identified more than a dozen Facebook pages and Instagram accounts, collectively boasting millions of followers, that have made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine or discouraged people from taking it. Some of these pages have existed for years.
Swiss authorities on Monday confirmed a police raid at the home of a Swiss software engineer who took credit for helping to break into a U.S. security-camera company’s online networks, part of what the activist hacker cited as an effort to raise awareness about the dangers of mass surveillance.
The Federal Office of Justice said regional police in central Lucerne, acting on a legal-assistance request from U.S. authorities, on Friday carried out a house search involving hacker Tillie Kottmann.
The hacker said online that electronics devices were seized during the raid. The Swiss office declined to specify the location or comment further, deferring all questions to “the relevant U.S. authority.”
The FBI said in a statement Friday thta it was “aware of the law enforcement activity conducted in Switzerland” but had no further comment.
Kottmann had identified as a member of a group of “hacktivists” who say they were able to view live camera feeds and peer into hospitals, schools, factories, jails and corporate offices for much of Monday and Tuesday last week after gaining access to the systems of California startup Verkada. They said the action was aimed at raising awareness
about mass surveillance.
Verkada later locked them out by disabling all internal administrator accounts that the hackers had accessed using valid credentials found online. The company alerted law enforcement and its customers.
Kottmann said on the social media site Mastodon last week that the raid wasn’t specifically about the Verkada hack but was tied to an earlier FBI investigation. Kottmann has previously attracted attention for leaking hacked material to expose security flaws, including from U.S. chipmaker Intel last year.
It’s common for professional cybersecurity researchers to probe online systems for security flaws, though “hacktivists” often take that a step further by publicly exposing security risks or leaked materials to effect social change.
Kottmann didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Verkada, based in San Mateo, has pitched its cloud-based surveillance service as part of the next generation of workplace security. Its software detects when people are in the camera’s view, and a “Person History” feature enables customers to recognize and track individual faces and other attributes, such as clothing color and likely gender. Not all customers use the facial recognition feature.