Health disinformation on Facebook has been viewed 3.8 billion times in the past year, peaking during the Covid-19 crisis, a report suggests.
Activist group Avaaz, which conducted the research, said Facebook poses a "serious threat" to public health.
Doctors have added false claims about vaccines on the social network that could limit the number of people willing to receive a Covid vaccine if one were available.
Facebook said the results "do not reflect the steps we have taken"
In a statement, the company said: "We share Avaaz's goal of limiting disinformation. Thanks to our global network of fact-checkers, from April to June, we applied warning labels to 98 million misinformation about Covid. 19 and removed seven million pieces of content that could cause imminent damage.
"We have referred over two billion people to health authority resources and when someone tries to share a link on Covid-19, we show them a pop-up to link them to credible health information."
False treatment
Despite his efforts, the Avaaz report suggests that only 16% of the health misinformation identified on Facebook carried a warning label.
According to the report, the top 10 websites identified by researchers as health disinformation communicators had nearly four times more views on Facebook than information from official sites, such as the World Health Organization.
A significant amount of incorrect health information was shared from public pages.
And 42 of those pages were followed by over 28 million people.
The highlighted content type includes:
- 8.4 million views for an article claiming that Bill Gates supported a polio vaccination that led to the paralysis of half a million children in India
- 4.5 million views for an article containing bogus cures for deadly diseases, such as colloidal silver for Ebola
- 2.4 million views for an article claiming that the quarantine has damaged public health
The research looked at accounts from the US, UK, France, Germany and Italy.
Fadi Quran, Avaaz's campaign director, said: "Facebook's algorithm is a major threat to public health.
"Mark Zuckerberg has promised to provide reliable information during the pandemic.
"But its algorithm is sabotaging these efforts by driving many of Facebook's 2.7 billion users to health disinformation networks.
"This info-demic will worsen the pandemic unless Facebook detoxifies its algorithm and provides fixes to everyone exposed to these viral lies."
'Toxic lies'
Avaaz called on the social network to provide independently verified corrections to anyone who viewed incorrect health information on its platform.
He also said he should downgrade disinformation posts in news feeds, in an effort to reduce their reach.
Prof Frank Ulrich Montgomery, who chairs the World Medical Association, said: "This pandemic should be a powerful reminder of vaccine success.
"But instead the anti-vaxxers are using Facebook to spread toxic lies and conspiracy theories."
The Secretary General of the European Union of Medical Specialists, Dr. Joao Miguel Grenho said: "Mark Zuckerberg must act immediately to stay with us to stop this information-demic.
"Otherwise, the number of people poisoned by taking a vaccine will be too high for us to defeat this pandemic."
Facebook insists it is fighting dangerous health myths.
And if you put the word "vaccines" in its search box, you will be directed to reliable information.
But it's also easy to find thousands of groups and individuals spreading disinformation without any apparent intervention from Facebook.
A case in point is a page called Kate Shemirani, who goes by the name Natural Nurse in A Toxic World and points out her qualifications.
In fact, Ms. Shemirani's nursing registration was suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Council in July, after complaints that she was spreading false information about Covid-19 and vaccines.
"Thousands of dead"
A look at what she posts on Facebook and Twitter reveals incessant attacks on Bill Gates, wearing masks, and NHS personnel, whom she calls criminals and liars for perpetuating the "hoax" that is the coronavirus.
But much of its content is about vaccines: This week it claimed that the polio vaccine caused polio and had injured and killed thousands.
We forwarded this post to both Facebook and Twitter to ask if it broke their rules.
Although Twitter did not release a public statement, it indicated that its rules only affected Covid-19, so it did not affect this post.
Facebook said that while it doesn't stop people from saying things that are actually wrong, it has taken action to make this and similar posts less prominent in people's news feeds.
