The PIB rejected the claim of French Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier that people vaccinated against COVID-19 would die within two years. Facebook removed it for a while.
Corona Vaccine (Indicative photo)
Late last month, triggering yet another showdown between the Center and social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram removed a fact-check post by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) linking COVID vaccination to death. The false claim was denied. The post was restored on both the platforms after government intervention.
On 25 May, the handle ‘PIB Fact Check’ shared a post on Facebook and Instagram, in which it dismissed the claim of French Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier that people vaccinated against COVID-19 would die within two years. Will go Attaching a picture of the purported claim, the post said, “A picture purportedly quoting a French Nobel laureate on #COVID19 vaccines is circulating on social media… #FAKE claimed in the picture IS… #COVID19 Vaccine is COMPLETELY SAFE…DO NOT FORWARD THIS PICTURE.”
Facebook warns to unpublish PIB’s page
A day later, both the online platforms removed the post without any explanation. Sources said Facebook, which also owns Instagram, warned that PIB’s page could be unpublished for posting “false news”. PIB officials then reached out to the IT ministry, who got in touch with senior officials from Facebook and Instagram through a series of emails, complaining about the lack of transparency on appeals and the fact-check process. After their intervention, the post was restored on both the platforms.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Indian Express that the platform had “accidentally temporarily withheld content” but later restored it.
Facebook did not cross-check
The incident has also raised concerns to the IT ministry about the lack of transparency in the appointment of fact-checkers. In internal meetings with other government departments that have flagged the issue, the ministry has assured officials to be “aware of the issue”. An IT ministry official said, “Both the platforms claim to have robust fact-check systems. When we reached out to him, he said that it was done inadvertently as a machine flagged it as false news. We have asked them why it was not cross-checked by a human fact-checker.”
The IT ministry is also likely to write to social media middlemen to be more transparent about the fact-checking process and share the details of the fact-checkers they have appointed.
Facebook has already removed PIB’s posts
The issue of fact-checkers on the social media platform had also come to the fore last month, after Twitter posted an alleged Congress “toolkit” by BJP members as “manipulative media”. The ministry then wrote a letter to Twitter seeking the removal of the tag as local law enforcement agencies were already pursuing the matter.
Senior IT ministry officials said this is not the first time that posts and content shared by PIB were taken down by Facebook and later restored after intervention by senior government officials. Earlier, on May 10, a post by the PIB Fact Check team on whether patients in the early stages of COVID should take steroids was flagged by Facebook and Instagram. Facebook then flagged the content as fake, but later restored it, calling it a “one-sided” incident.
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