Facebook has launched a new notifications system that will encourage users to leave groups whenever Facebook removes one of the group’s posts for coronavirus “misinformation.”
Fast Company reports that these notifications will be sent to all users that have liked, commented on, or shared a post that is later removed by Facebook for containing “false, potentially harmful information about COVID-19.”
Users that open these notifications will be directed to a page containing a thumbnail image of the post that was removed, a description of whether they liked, shared, or commented on the post, and the reason it was removed. If these users are members of a group that originally posted the content that has been removed, Facebook will also give them an option to leave the group.
Facebook told Fast Company that it’s launching these new notifications because the initial warning system it launched in April was confusing users. This initial system sends messages to the news feed of users that have liked, shared, commented on, or reacted to content that Facebook deems to be “harmful” coronavirus misinformation.
This new notification system is the first major tool that Facebook has released that encourages users to leave groups after Facebook has flagged their content.
And according to Alex Leavitt, a misinformation product researcher at Facebook, the company is considering expanding the scope of this tool.
“This is just part of the iteration that we’ve been going through,” said Leavitt. “In the future we might consider expanding it beyond that.”
The release of this system is the latest of several Facebook measures that go beyond suppressing and censoring content and instead, actively discourage or prevent users from interacting with content that Facebook has deemed to be misinformation.
In August, the company started warning users when they attempt to share any coronavirus-related article. The company also announced a new deep learning system that automatically detects misinformation and a tool that uses “misinformation markers” to automatically halt viral dissenting coronavirus content.
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